Fergie's Tech Blog

Romanian Pentagon Hacker Arrested

Lucian Constantin writes on Softpedia News:

A 23-year-old man suspected of having hacked into Department of Defense systems during 2006 has been arrested in Iaşi, Romania, by the local police and the Direction for Investigating Organized Crime and Terrorism (D.I.I.C.O.T.). If found guilty, the hacker risks a maximum sentence of 12 years behind bars.

The organized crime police descended in force on the apartment of Eduard Lucian Mandru, on 18 March, at 7 AM in the morning. Realizing that he had been tracked down, the hacker attempted to destroy the data on his hard drive, but the process was stopped in time by the authorities.

In his daily life, Eduard Lucian Mandru is studying for a masters degree in Banks and Financial Markets at the local Faculty of Economy and Business Management. However, the student is also very passionate about computers and the Linux operating system.

According to the U.S. investigators, Mr. Mandru is the hacker calling himself Wolfenstein, who broke into a secure computer network belonging to the Department of Defense in 2006 and infected several systems with an information-stealing trojan.

The authorities had a very hard time locating him, as the hacker was accessing the network through compromised servers in Japan. In addition, he was covering his tracks by deleting all access logs. One solid lead that the investigators had was a yahoo e-mail address associated with the perpetrator, which eventually led to his identification.

posted by Fergie @ 3/20/2009 11:30:00 AM