14 DAY TRIAL // Max Butler, known as Max Vision or as Iceman, is a dangerous cyber-criminal that had already been convicted for hacking into the US military's servers, but now, he has been accused of mass identity theft and could face 40 years in jail and paying a huge fine, if he is found guilty.
He was indicted by a federal court jury in Pittsburg on three counts of wire fraud and two counts of transferring stolen ID indo, as The Register informs. He basically cracked his way into financial institutions from which he stole a lot of people's credit card numbers. After that, he just sold those on the Web. He even had a forum to help him in his no-good cyber-scheme.
He was caught and charged because the authorities got to one of his peers, a guy that had bought a lot of credit card numbers from him. The Iceman has been supplying this one buyer with at least 1.000 credit card numbers per month. But authorities believe that this isn't the single person he sold credit card numbers to and that he may have more accomplices.
This guy is just another example of hacking evolution - back in 2001 when he first hijacked army computers he had installed a program that would create a backdoor for him to use later on. Now, that was destructive old-school hacking, but he knew that wouldn't bring him much, except fame, that's why now he tried to make money out of hacking. This just shows us how things have gone from "Hey, look at me, I hacked a great site!" to "I hope they don't see me when I rip off all these people?"
And this is just another case of a hacker getting out of jail and getting back to old habits. Why do these things happen? Well, all he knows is computers, and let's be serious - who would hire a guy with the credibility Max Butler has?