Acxicom hacker gets 45 months

A BLOKE who hacked into the Acxiom Corporation data base has been sentenced to nearly four years jail.

Daniel Baas, 26, of Milford, admitted stealing the personal identification files between January 2001 and January 2003 and storing them on his hard drive at home.

Acxiom is a huge database whose clients include credit card issuers, banks, telcos and retailers, so the theft was big news.

Baas was a systems administrator for a market intelligence company, which had an agreement to analyse data for Acxiom. However he exceeded his access rights and downloaded encrypted password files and stole more than 300 personal files.

Baas bragged about the theft to other hackers, but said he didn't share them with anyone.

Acxiom told the court that Baas' action cost them $US5.8 million, including employees' time and travel expenses, payments for security audits and encryption software.

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