Wireless hackers face jail

A MICHIGAN hacker who tried to turn over DIY chain Lowes has admitted trying to steal credit card numbers armed only with a laptop and a wireless connection.

Brian Salcedo, 21, along with with two others hoped to take advantage of an unsecured wi-fi network which they discovered during a wardrive.

Salcedo, as the mastermind of the scheme, now faces a 12 to 15 year prison term because potential losses exceeded $2.5 million. But Salcedo is expected to cop a plea to aid in the conviction of his fellow hackers.

Adam Botbyl, 20, is scheduled to plead guilty Monday faces 41 to 51 months in prison. The remaining defendant, 23-year-old Paul Timmins, has pleaded no guilty.

The hackers used the wireless network to route through Lowe's corporate data center and connect to the local networks at stores in Kansas, North Carolina, Kentucky, South Dakota, Florida, and two stores in California.

They modified a program called "tcpcredit" that Lowe's uses to process credit card transactions so that it stored them in a place where the hackers could visit later.

However network administrators detected and began monitoring the intrusions, and called in the Feds.

Lowe's network security team found the program, which had collected only six credit card numbers.

It is not he first time that Salcedo has been caught hacking. He was the first juvenile to be charged under Michigan's state computer crime law, for hacking an ISP.

The story first appeared here. µ