Security News > 2001 > February > Alleged eBay Hacker Free On Oversight

http://siliconvalley.internet.com/news/article/0,2198,3531_578781,00.html By Brian McWilliams February 2, 2001 The computer whiz kid arrested for attacking San Jose-based Ebay (Nasdaq: EBAY) and other Silicon Valley Internet companies found himself temporarily free again Friday, thanks to a bureaucratic oversight. Although he pleaded innocent to all charges last week, Jerome Heckenkamp, the 21-year-old former computer network engineer at Los Alamos National Labs, was unable to come up with the $50,000 dollar bond by the February 1 deadline set by a judge at a pre-trial hearing. So on Thursday, Heckenkamp dutifully drove himself from his home in Los Alamos to Albuquerque, N.M. where he turned himself into US Marshalls. But according to his father, Thomas Heckenkamp of Pewaukee, Wisconsin, the alleged computer criminal got a pleasant surprise before being shipped off to jail in California. "They handcuffed him, put shackles on his ankles, and put him in with a bunch of prisoners who were going to be transported. Then, a couple hours later somebody official came by and said `you're unarrested,'" said the elder Heckenkamp. According to his attorney, Jennifer Granick, New Mexico court authorities released Jerome Heckenkamp after discovering that, due to a bureaucratic oversight, they hadn't yet received a warrant for his arrest from prosecutors in San Jose. Granick said she will attempt to make arrangements with the the federal court that will enable Heckenkamp to remain in Los Alamos until his next court date, February 12. "This incident demonstrates that Mr. Heckenkamp is more than willing to take the conditions of his pre-trial release seriously -- even more seriously than the system itself. He's shown that he is a responsible, diligent person who follows what he's told to do. I don't think it does anybody any good for him to sit in jail while his case is resolved," said Granick, a lawyer who specializes in defending computer crime cases and who is currently clinical director of the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School. Heckenkamp failed to raise the $50,000 bond despite efforts by supporters who have created a legal defense fund on his behalf as well as a web site, FreeSK8.org that proclaims his innocence and blames "a restless and unrelenting Federal Bureau of Investigation" for Heckenkamp's arrest. SK8 is the hacker nickname Heckenkamp used while a student at the University of Wisconsin. Heckenkamp has denied charges that he hacked into Ebay, Exodus, ETrade, Qualcomm, Lycos, Juniper Networks, and Cygnus Support Solutions in 1999. He contends that someone else remotely hijacked his dorm-room computer, which was running an unpatched version of Linux, and committed the crimes unbeknownst to him while he was a graduate student. Prosecutors haven't detailed what evidence they have linking him to the crimes, which they claim resulted in nearly a million dollars worth of damages to the ecommerce firms. But US attorneys say Heckenkamp has admitted to computer crimes while at the university and agreed to a one-year suspension from its graduate school. They also say he was fired from a student job after he admitted illegally trespassing on an Internet service provider in 1997. As a condition of his pre-trial agreement, Heckenkamp is prohibited from using the Internet and from visiting his family in Wisconsin. Thomas Heckenkamp said he offered to put his house up as collateral on the bond, but his son refused. "He's a very unusual kid. I think the FBI has found that out by now and maybe the court system is finding that out too." ISN is hosted by SecurityFocus.com --- To unsubscribe email LISTSERV () SecurityFocus com with a message body of "SIGNOFF ISN".

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