Leonard Rose | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1959 (age 66–67) |
| Other names | Terminus |
| Convictions | Two counts of wire fraud, stemming from publishing an article in Phrack Magazine.[1] |
| Criminal penalty | 12 month and 1 day prison sentence[2][3] |
Leonard Rose (born 1959 inElkton, Maryland), akaTerminus, is an Americanhacker who in 1991 accepted aplea bargain that convicted him of two counts ofwire fraud stemming from publishing an article inPhrack magazine.[1]
He wrote an article forPhrack explaining howtrojan horses worked and excerpted 21 lines of theAT&T SVR3.2 "login.c" source code. This prompted both AT&T and theUnited States Secret Service to raid his home and seize a moving truck full of computers, books, electronics and paperwork from his home office inMiddletown,MD.
The two counts of wire fraud stemmed from him sending two pieces of email (the actual article containing excerpts of login.c to the publishers ofPhrack on two occasions, asCraig Neidorf (aka Knight Lightning; then the co-publisher ofPhrack) had accidentally deleted the original mail.
Other counts in the original indictment were from writing a brute force password decryption program using a dictionary attack, which the US Federal Government considered "burglary tools", and tried to approach much like a burglar carrying something to break into a physical residence during the commission of a crime.
During this period, Rose was also accused of being the "mastermind" of theLegion of Doom. Many newspaper articles referred to him as being somehow involved with the LoD,[4] which was never the case.[citation needed]
John Gilmore,Mitch Kapor,John Perry Barlow and many others came to Rose's aid and helped pay for his defense.Mike Godwin was instrumental in coordinating his defense efforts until the capitulation and plea bargain.
TheElectronic Frontier Foundation was founded on the cases of Terminus, Knight Lightning, Taran King,Steve Jackson Games and everyone else scooped up inOperation Sundevil, which was covered inBruce Sterling's non-fiction bookThe Hacker Crackdown.
Under the plea agreements, ... Rose ... will serve a year in prison.