U.S. Department of Justice revealed via a press release that Eric McCarty, 24 has pleaded guilty to the charges brought against him in the District Court of Los Angeles. The felony count involved the hacking of the University of Southern California's computer network and the accessing of illegal information related to student applications. "By pleading guilty, McCarty admitted that he intentionally accessed, without authorization, the protected computer system maintained by USC, and as a result recklessly caused damage to USC's on-line application system. According to the plea agreement, McCarty admitted that in June 2005, he bypassed the login authentication to the on-line application system using a SQL injection attack," reads the press release.

McCarty retrieved records of seven applicants from the USC database, containing sensitive information including names, social security numbers and applicant Website passwords. Additionally, the hacker contacted a reporter at securityfocus.com from an ihackedusc@gmail.com Google email account, describing the details of the hack and delivering the retrieved records as proof. The hacking determined a 10 day downtime for the USC applicant website and SQL database.

"McCarty pleaded guilty today before United States District Judge Percy Anderson, who is scheduled to sentence him on December 4, 2006, at 8:30 a.m. The case against McCarty is the result of an investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation," informed the press release.