14 DAY TRIAL // The trial of Matthew Flannery, the Australian man known on the hacking scene as Aush0k, will start in July. The Register reports that the trial is expected to last only for two days.
When the Australian Federal Police (AFP) arrested Flannery in April 2013, it called him a self-proclaimed leader of the hacker group LulzSec. He was suspected of hacking into the systems of the Narrabri Shire Council in New South Wales.
He was initially charged with two counts of unauthorized modification of data to cause impairment, and one count of unauthorized access to or modification of restricted data. However, in March 2014, the prosecution downgraded the case to a local court, changed his bail conditions and reduced the number of charges.
In March, Flannery’s lawyer revealed that they might request that all charges against him be dropped.
While the Narrabri Shire Council’s website is technically a government site, it probably wasn’t too difficult to deface it.
Furthermore, at the time of his arrest, authorities suggested that the man abused his position at the IT company he was working for to access sensitive customer information. However, the firm in question highlighted the fact that Flannery was in a probation period and he didn’t have access to customer data.