A former IT manager has received a year and a day federal prison sentence for hacking into his former employer’s computer system.
Steven Barnes was found guilty of causing Blue Falcon Networks’ mail server to send out spam. The damage he caused also blocked e-mail access to the company.
Barnes must also pay more than $54,000 to his former employer, which is now known as Akimbo Systems.
He worked for the California company for eight months before being fired in April 2003.
Five months later, Barnes hacked into the company’s computer system and caused the mail server to send out spam including porn and viruses.
That caused other computers to blacklist Blue Falcon’s e-mails as spam, preventing it from communicating with its customers.
Federal prosecutor Shawna Yen urged the judge to sentence Barnes to prison time to “send a message to future would-be hackers that this kind of crime … is taken seriously by the courts,” according to the San Francisco Chronicle.
