14 DAY TRIAL // Michael Dolan was 18 years old in 2002 when he first hacked AOL. For 4 years, he had used all sorts of malicious software upon America Online users. He has been arrested in September 2006.
I read this piece of news on Sophos, and I have to say that the tactics he used were pretty much standard phish-and-cash-in schemes, nothing special about those. What shook me quite a bit was the age at which he did it - 18 years old! Just think about it, you don't become a powerful hacker that can hit AOL, overnight. I guess that by the time he was 18 he already knew more about computers than a lot of users do. It's a pity that such a great mind will be put behind bars, but he did break the law... So, to get down to the facts, what the young American did was use his special software to steal screen-names form the users that had joined AOL chatrooms. After doing that, he would send them spam e-mails with greeting cards that were said to be from Hallmark (yeah, right!). The thing is those e-mails were used to infect users with a trojan horse that didn't do much, but which was very good at the one thing it did. Once receiving the virus, AOL customers couldn't log on to their accounts without giving away personal data. Of course, Dolan would receive that info. He had used it to order online goods and steal money from ATM machines, according to Sophos.
It's easy to imagine that neither the scammed users nor the AOL people were happy with this. According to the same site, a plea agreement with the US Department of Justice calls for Dolan to spend 7 years in prison, and then remain on supervised probation for 2 or 3 years. He may also have to pay a fine of a quarter million dollars. He will receive his sentence this November.