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US indicts Brit bloke over backdoor blagging of US troops' data

Alleged Suffolk hacker cuffed by Blighty's plods in separate investigation

A 28-year-old British man has been indicted in the US, which alleges he hacked of thousands of computer systems in the US and other countries, a New Jersey attorney said today.

Lauri Love of Stradishall, England, was indicted on one count of accessing a US department or agency computer without permission and one count of conspiracy.

Prosecutors claim that Love and his alleged conspirators, between October 2012 and October 2013, inserted backdoors into compromised networks to allow them to return at a later date to steal confidential data from those hacked systems.

“As part of their alleged scheme, they stole military data and personal identifying information belonging to servicemen and women," said US attorney Paul Fishman in a statement listing the full charge sheet.

He added: "Such conduct endangers the security of our country and is an affront to those who serve."

Love, if convicted in the US, faces a prison term of up to five years and a $250,000 fine, or twice the gross gain or loss from the offence, for each of the two counts with which he is charged. Prosecutors claim that Love's activities cost the affected agencies “millions of dollars”.

The indictment also claims that Love and his alleged co-conspirators used proxy servers and Tor to “conceal their identities”, as well as “using multiple identities to communicate with each other.”

In a conversation dated October 7, 2012, and described in the indictment, Love discussed the hacking of an Army database that might have yielded 400,000 email addresses, and asked a co-conspirator to "grab one email for curiosity," reports Reuters.

Cops from Britain's National Crime Agency cuffed Love on Friday at his Suffolk home as part of a separate British investigation.

He was released on bail until February 2014. ®

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