14 DAY TRIAL // After winning an appeal and being released from jail, 26-year-old Glenn Mangham, the individual accused of hacking into Facebook by using an employee’s credentials came forward and made a video statement and a blog post to explain his actions.
Initially convicted to 8 months in prison, the Court of Appeal in London decided that there weren’t any ill intentions on the hacker’s behalf, the judges deciding not only to release him, but also to allow him to use the Internet once again.
“I was surprised at just how difficult it has been throughout this process for me to clearly express what happened in a way that fully reflects my intent without pieces of information being missed out or misinterpreted,” Mangham said.
He stated that he took full responsibility for his deeds, but at the time he didn’t see anything wrong in what he was doing, especially since he was hoping that the social media company would welcome his findings and “retroactively authorize [his] actions so that they become legal.”
He claimed that this particular technique had worked in the past, so he didn’t expect things to escalate in such a manner.
“While I accept that some cost was caused by what I did I would still dispute its quoted magnitude,” he explained.
In his lengthy blog post, Mangham also counterattacked a statement made by Joe Sullivan, Facebook’s CSO, left as a comment to an article in Sophos’ blog. In his comment, Sullivan accused the security expert of acting with ill intent and even condemned the author of the article for naming him an “ethical hacker.”
After criticizing the CSO for attacking him while he was locked up, Mangham explained in detail why he took the Facebook source code, why he didn’t use any proxies to cover up his tracks and he even revealed the exact amount of damage he believed his actions had caused.
