Briton cleared of hacking Houston port system

[Nottingham]

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/front/2163755

Briton cleared of hacking Houston port system
Reuters News Service
LONDON - A British court cleared a teen-ager today of hacking into the computer of the U.S. port of Houston, Texas, after the youth testified his own computer had been taken over by someone else to mount the attack.

Aaron Caffrey, 19, could have faced up to five years in prison in what would have been a landmark computer hacking case. "Hacking" is the term for using a computer to break into another computer network.

Police charged him last year after a lengthy investigation, accusing him of unleashing a digital attack that crippled the computer navigation system of one of the world's largest ports.

Police said he intended to instruct the Texas computers to bombard an Internet chat-room user with unwelcome messages.

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I thought this was very interesting :bounce: These computer system attacks are getting ugly