Ericsson hacker jailed for three years

'Gissa job' industrial spy sent to Swedish slammer

By John Leyden • Get more from this author

Posted in Music and Media, 6th April 2005 10:15 GMT

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A Hungarian man who cracked into the corporate network of Swedish telecoms giant Ericsson was jailed for three years on Monday.

Csaba Richter, a 26-year-old IT consultant, pleaded guilty to accessing sensitive documents on Ericsson's intranet. If the case had gone to trial he stood to go to jail for up to six years on charges of "industrial espionage and illegal use of secret information".

AP reports that Richter claimed he wanted to expose security failings at Ericsson as a "provocation" that he hoped might lead to a job offer with the mobile handset telecoms equipment manufacturer. Richter had access to information on Ericsson's intranet between March 2002 and June 2004.

Richter's attempts to sell some of this data on the net in 2003 attracted the attentions of Swedish intelligence officers, sparking an investigation. The would-be industrial spy was arrested in October 2004 at Malmo airport, Sweden, by secret service investigators posing as potential buyers of the information he was hawking, AFP reports. ®