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There are a lot of hackers on the net who have caused problems for the US government and the FBI in particular, but they were all much less knowledgeable than Gary McKinnon, nicknamed SOLO. He was the hacker that the FBI and NASA had been chasing for years, but they were never able to bring him to justice in the US. Gary McKinnon hacked the Pentagon and the FBI to find evidence of UFOs and went too far.
Contents:
The true story of a schoolboy who hacked NASA, the Pentagon and the BBC.
2001. London. Wood Green district. Late at night. A knock is heard in a cramped apartment. The door is knocked off its hinges, Agents 5 and the police burst in. They pounce on a guy with long hair and put handcuffs on him. This is Gary McKinnon, aka Vinni, aka the hacker Solo. He is 35 years old, but his story began in his school years, when, obsessed with space and UFOs, he first sat down at old computers.
His room is littered with floppy disks, wires and books on programming became the starting point of the largest hack of the US military systems, the Pentagon, NASA and the BBC. This is a true story about a schoolboy who sought the truth about aliens, challenged the most powerful system in the world and became a legend of the hacker underground. But alas, he paid for his dream with years of fear and almost lost his freedom. Subscribe if you're ready to learn how one guy with a computer turned the Pentagon and the entire cybersecurity world upside down.
Section 1. Childhood and first steps into the world.
Gary McKinnon was born in 1966 in Glasgow, Scotland, in a working-class area where life was simple and dreams were rare. His musician father played in pubs, performing Beatles covers, and his mother worked as a waitress to support the family. They lived in a cramped apartment, where Gary shared a room with his younger brother. His childhood was modest - old comic books, cassettes with rock music, and a TV with Star Wars on.
Gary was a quiet boy at school, his classmates considered him weird because of his love of science fiction and theories about aliens in general. He could talk for hours about UFOs and similar nonsense. He had almost no friends, as in all stories of this nature, but loneliness did not frighten him. He found solace in books and electronics. At the age of 13, Gary's stepfather gave him a used Commodore 64.
This computer became his world. He spent hours sorting out code, writing simple programs in BASIC, creating primitive games. And by the age of 14, he had easily fixed old PCs and knew everything about electronics from A to Z. His room turned into a chaotic workshop, where floppy disks, hard drives, tattered books on programming and magazines about space were lying around. His parents, as always in such stories, did not understand his passion.
You should have gone to a proper school and become an engineer or something like that. “I made a pipe out of my grandfather’s stick,” his mother said, dreaming that one day her son would choose a stable career, and not all this stuff he was doing. But Gary dreamed of the stars, he watched the X-Files and was sure the government was hiding the truth about UFOs. And if aliens were real and existed, he was determined to get any information about it, scrolling through forms on the early Internet.
As you can imagine, there was zero information about aliens and even less any hidden or encrypted information on early forums. By the age of 15, Gary had become interested in hacking, he came across the BBC - these are bulletin boards, forums where hackers exchange advice. His first hacks, so to speak, were innocent. He changed passwords on school computers or penetrated local networks of Glasgow companies for fun. Nothing serious and especially nothing that could say that in the future he would become the main enemy of NASA and the Pentagon.
Teachers praised him for his success in computer science, but no one suspected that the quiet teenager was already digging into systems that are considered the most secure in the world. After some successes of their son, his parents began to be proud, thinking that their son would become a first-class computer specialist, as relatives like to say. Well, if you want to work for real and safely, you can find a post-navigator with educational articles and articles on online security on our forum.
Section 2. Immersion in the hacker world.
By the 90s, Gary had moved to London, where he rented a cheap flat in Woodgreen. He worked part-time as a technician, repaired computers, sometimes took orders for setting up various networks and assembled PCs. But his real life, in which he breathed, was on the Internet. As a soloist, he hung out on hacker forums, where they discussed absolutely everything, from encryption to rumors about secret military projects.
Gary learned the Perl language and wrote his first scripts that scanned networks for vulnerabilities. He did not want to steal or harm, he needed the truth, no malicious intent. His passion became rumors about the Disclosure project, an allegedly secret US program related to UFOs and antigravity technologies. In 1997, at the age of 31, Gary began to seriously dig into military networks.
The Internet was slow back then, modems beeped when connecting via dial-up, but this did not stop him at all. He wrote a program that scanned thousands of computers, looking for systems with factory passwords like admin or password 123. To his shock, there were dozens of such networks of the Pentagon and NASA, and it turned out to be much easier than he thought at first glance. From 2001 to 2002, Gary, sitting in his room, penetrated 97 US military systems, including the Pentagon, NASA and the BBC.
His goal was quite simple and clear - to find evidence of the existence of UFOs. He dug through classified files, looked for mentions of ground officers, and also looked for projects of antigravity engines that are hidden from the public. On one of the NASA servers, he came across a picture of an object in space, strange, similar to a ship, but not like a satellite. But due to weak internet connection it was not possible to download the file, only take a screenshot.
Gary also found lists with mysterious names like "Non-Terrestrial Officers". He was sure it was proof. But every login was a risk, and he knew it. Over time, more and more information began to fall into his hands. He was like a child who got into an event created only for him. All the information was literally in the palm of his hand.
Section 3. Hacking the Pentagon and fatal errors.
Gary worked at night, when it was daytime in the US, to minimize the chances of being noticed. He used proxy servers, cleaned logs, tried to be, so to speak, invisible. But, as always, curiosity and self-confidence let the protagonist down. He began leaving cheeky notes in the system like "Your security is garbage" or "I am looking for the truth about UFOs." It was his way of rubbing the military's nose in their own weaknesses.
Later, in court, he justified himself by saying that he was trying to show and point out the holes in the system and wanted the Pentagon to fix them, but more on that later. Such messages attracted attention. In November 2001, a NASA administrator noticed strange activity. Files were opening, passwords were changing by themselves, and the system was mercilessly slowing down. After lengthy investigations, surveillance, and various checks, all traces led to a provider in London.
Gary, as is often the case in such situations, is a knowledgeable person, but he does not understand that you always need to log in with a VPN. Gary made a key mistake - he did not always use a VPN, and his real IP address sometimes showed up in the logs, which is how he was subsequently identified. In addition, he used the same nickname solo on forums and in systems, which allowed the authorities to link his actions to hacking self-secret systems.
The Pentagon claimed that Gary caused $800,000 in damage by disabling a slew of computers. They said his hacks paralyzed military networks for days after September 11, 2001, which only fueled the accusations. In the wake of the terrorist attack, any kind of mischief against the government was viewed very negatively and was nipped in the bud. Gary was no exception. Gary himself later denied his guilt in court.
"I didn't hack into systems, I just looked at files and looked for UFOs, not war." For the US, he became a cyberterrorist. His actions were called the largest military hack in history, although at that point they didn't know who was on the other end of the monitor. They only had data and logs. Since Sam lived in London and extradition was a complicated matter, he continued hacking systems until he realized he was being watched. By the spring of 2002, he had become paranoid.
Checked the locks and encrypted the data, but it was too late. His IP was already in the hands of the authorities, who were not going to let him go just like that.
Chapter 4. Detention and chaos.
March 7, 2002, 6 a.m. Gary's apartment in Woodgreen was raided by agents 5 and the police. He was sitting at the computer at the time, frantically trying to erase the data from the hard drive. He was thrown to the floor and handcuffed. His girlfriend, mother, father, absolutely no one knew what he was doing.
The agents turned the apartment upside down and as a result of the search, they confiscated two old computers, dozens of floppy disks, a notebook with codes and passwords. The search was fairly standard. The agents were looking for evidence, but Gary managed to encrypt some of the data. And the police in those years were not as savvy as they are now. Now everyone knows that you need to get an unlocked, and especially unencrypted, laptop of a suspect at any cost. The United States has brought seven charges of cybercrime, demanding extradition.
Gary faced up to 70 years in prison in the American prison system. His lawyers immediately pointed to his mental state. Gary was diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome, which is what actually caused his obsession with UFOs. The defense always said the same thing: he is not a criminal, he is a sick person who is simply looking for the truth. But the US authorities were adamant. They called him a threat to national security, claiming that his hacks could disrupt military operations, or, even worse, expose all the weaknesses of the US advanced agencies.
Chapter 5. The legal battle and public support.
The legal battle lasted for 10 years, from 2002 to 2012. The US put pressure on Britain, demanding Gary's extradition. His lawyers fought like lions. They proved that extradition would destroy his psyche. Asperger's syndrome made Gary vulnerable. He fell into depression, was afraid of prison, because he thought that he simply would not be able to survive there.
In 2008, he began to have panic attacks, he almost never left the house. The public rallied behind him. Hacker forums were buzzing with headlines like “Solo Hero.” He had shown how weak their system was. Tens of thousands of signatures were collected on petitions for his release. Protests in London took place, with activists holding up banners reading “Free Gary.” Even the rock band Pink Floyd and their frontman David Gilman supported him, mentioning him in an interview.
The media dubbed him the UFO hacker, making him a legend. “He’s not a terrorist, he’s a truth seeker,” The Guardian wrote. In 2012, British Home Secretary Theresa May made a historic decision. She blocked Gary’s extradition, citing his mental health and risk of suicide. It was the first time Britain had refused to extradite a hacker to the US. Gary avoided prison, but remained under supervision.
He was banned from using the internet without permission, and his life became a series of checks and restrictions.
Chapter 6. Aftermath and Legacy.
Gary McKinnon's story changed the world of cybersecurity. The Pentagon and NASA spent millions of dollars protecting their networks, patching the vulnerabilities he exploited. His hack inspired programs like "Hack the Pentagon," where hackers are paid to find holes in the system.
Gary became a symbol for some heroes who challenged the system, for others - a criminal who compromised security. But he always insisted and repeated: "I wanted the truth, not the glory," he told the BBC in 2015. He still believes that he found traces of a UFO, but to this day he has no evidence. Gary lives a quiet life in London. He gives lectures on cybersecurity and autism, but the Internet is forbidden to him.
His story is a lesson. Genius and curiosity can open any door, but one mistake can end it all. If he always used VPN, didn't leave notes and changed nicknames, maybe he wouldn't have been caught.
Be sure to leave a comment under this topic. Bye.
Contents:
- The True Story of a Schoolboy Who Hacked NASA, the Pentagon, and the BBC
- The first steps of a hacker
- Dive into the hacker world
- Pentagon hack fatal mistakes
- Detention and chaos
- Legal battle and public support
- Consequences and Legacy
The true story of a schoolboy who hacked NASA, the Pentagon and the BBC.
2001. London. Wood Green district. Late at night. A knock is heard in a cramped apartment. The door is knocked off its hinges, Agents 5 and the police burst in. They pounce on a guy with long hair and put handcuffs on him. This is Gary McKinnon, aka Vinni, aka the hacker Solo. He is 35 years old, but his story began in his school years, when, obsessed with space and UFOs, he first sat down at old computers.
His room is littered with floppy disks, wires and books on programming became the starting point of the largest hack of the US military systems, the Pentagon, NASA and the BBC. This is a true story about a schoolboy who sought the truth about aliens, challenged the most powerful system in the world and became a legend of the hacker underground. But alas, he paid for his dream with years of fear and almost lost his freedom. Subscribe if you're ready to learn how one guy with a computer turned the Pentagon and the entire cybersecurity world upside down.
Section 1. Childhood and first steps into the world.
Gary McKinnon was born in 1966 in Glasgow, Scotland, in a working-class area where life was simple and dreams were rare. His musician father played in pubs, performing Beatles covers, and his mother worked as a waitress to support the family. They lived in a cramped apartment, where Gary shared a room with his younger brother. His childhood was modest - old comic books, cassettes with rock music, and a TV with Star Wars on.
Gary was a quiet boy at school, his classmates considered him weird because of his love of science fiction and theories about aliens in general. He could talk for hours about UFOs and similar nonsense. He had almost no friends, as in all stories of this nature, but loneliness did not frighten him. He found solace in books and electronics. At the age of 13, Gary's stepfather gave him a used Commodore 64.
This computer became his world. He spent hours sorting out code, writing simple programs in BASIC, creating primitive games. And by the age of 14, he had easily fixed old PCs and knew everything about electronics from A to Z. His room turned into a chaotic workshop, where floppy disks, hard drives, tattered books on programming and magazines about space were lying around. His parents, as always in such stories, did not understand his passion.
You should have gone to a proper school and become an engineer or something like that. “I made a pipe out of my grandfather’s stick,” his mother said, dreaming that one day her son would choose a stable career, and not all this stuff he was doing. But Gary dreamed of the stars, he watched the X-Files and was sure the government was hiding the truth about UFOs. And if aliens were real and existed, he was determined to get any information about it, scrolling through forms on the early Internet.
As you can imagine, there was zero information about aliens and even less any hidden or encrypted information on early forums. By the age of 15, Gary had become interested in hacking, he came across the BBC - these are bulletin boards, forums where hackers exchange advice. His first hacks, so to speak, were innocent. He changed passwords on school computers or penetrated local networks of Glasgow companies for fun. Nothing serious and especially nothing that could say that in the future he would become the main enemy of NASA and the Pentagon.
Teachers praised him for his success in computer science, but no one suspected that the quiet teenager was already digging into systems that are considered the most secure in the world. After some successes of their son, his parents began to be proud, thinking that their son would become a first-class computer specialist, as relatives like to say. Well, if you want to work for real and safely, you can find a post-navigator with educational articles and articles on online security on our forum.
Section 2. Immersion in the hacker world.
By the 90s, Gary had moved to London, where he rented a cheap flat in Woodgreen. He worked part-time as a technician, repaired computers, sometimes took orders for setting up various networks and assembled PCs. But his real life, in which he breathed, was on the Internet. As a soloist, he hung out on hacker forums, where they discussed absolutely everything, from encryption to rumors about secret military projects.
Gary learned the Perl language and wrote his first scripts that scanned networks for vulnerabilities. He did not want to steal or harm, he needed the truth, no malicious intent. His passion became rumors about the Disclosure project, an allegedly secret US program related to UFOs and antigravity technologies. In 1997, at the age of 31, Gary began to seriously dig into military networks.
The Internet was slow back then, modems beeped when connecting via dial-up, but this did not stop him at all. He wrote a program that scanned thousands of computers, looking for systems with factory passwords like admin or password 123. To his shock, there were dozens of such networks of the Pentagon and NASA, and it turned out to be much easier than he thought at first glance. From 2001 to 2002, Gary, sitting in his room, penetrated 97 US military systems, including the Pentagon, NASA and the BBC.
His goal was quite simple and clear - to find evidence of the existence of UFOs. He dug through classified files, looked for mentions of ground officers, and also looked for projects of antigravity engines that are hidden from the public. On one of the NASA servers, he came across a picture of an object in space, strange, similar to a ship, but not like a satellite. But due to weak internet connection it was not possible to download the file, only take a screenshot.
Gary also found lists with mysterious names like "Non-Terrestrial Officers". He was sure it was proof. But every login was a risk, and he knew it. Over time, more and more information began to fall into his hands. He was like a child who got into an event created only for him. All the information was literally in the palm of his hand.
Section 3. Hacking the Pentagon and fatal errors.
Gary worked at night, when it was daytime in the US, to minimize the chances of being noticed. He used proxy servers, cleaned logs, tried to be, so to speak, invisible. But, as always, curiosity and self-confidence let the protagonist down. He began leaving cheeky notes in the system like "Your security is garbage" or "I am looking for the truth about UFOs." It was his way of rubbing the military's nose in their own weaknesses.
Later, in court, he justified himself by saying that he was trying to show and point out the holes in the system and wanted the Pentagon to fix them, but more on that later. Such messages attracted attention. In November 2001, a NASA administrator noticed strange activity. Files were opening, passwords were changing by themselves, and the system was mercilessly slowing down. After lengthy investigations, surveillance, and various checks, all traces led to a provider in London.
Gary, as is often the case in such situations, is a knowledgeable person, but he does not understand that you always need to log in with a VPN. Gary made a key mistake - he did not always use a VPN, and his real IP address sometimes showed up in the logs, which is how he was subsequently identified. In addition, he used the same nickname solo on forums and in systems, which allowed the authorities to link his actions to hacking self-secret systems.
The Pentagon claimed that Gary caused $800,000 in damage by disabling a slew of computers. They said his hacks paralyzed military networks for days after September 11, 2001, which only fueled the accusations. In the wake of the terrorist attack, any kind of mischief against the government was viewed very negatively and was nipped in the bud. Gary was no exception. Gary himself later denied his guilt in court.
"I didn't hack into systems, I just looked at files and looked for UFOs, not war." For the US, he became a cyberterrorist. His actions were called the largest military hack in history, although at that point they didn't know who was on the other end of the monitor. They only had data and logs. Since Sam lived in London and extradition was a complicated matter, he continued hacking systems until he realized he was being watched. By the spring of 2002, he had become paranoid.
Checked the locks and encrypted the data, but it was too late. His IP was already in the hands of the authorities, who were not going to let him go just like that.
Chapter 4. Detention and chaos.
March 7, 2002, 6 a.m. Gary's apartment in Woodgreen was raided by agents 5 and the police. He was sitting at the computer at the time, frantically trying to erase the data from the hard drive. He was thrown to the floor and handcuffed. His girlfriend, mother, father, absolutely no one knew what he was doing.
The agents turned the apartment upside down and as a result of the search, they confiscated two old computers, dozens of floppy disks, a notebook with codes and passwords. The search was fairly standard. The agents were looking for evidence, but Gary managed to encrypt some of the data. And the police in those years were not as savvy as they are now. Now everyone knows that you need to get an unlocked, and especially unencrypted, laptop of a suspect at any cost. The United States has brought seven charges of cybercrime, demanding extradition.
Gary faced up to 70 years in prison in the American prison system. His lawyers immediately pointed to his mental state. Gary was diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome, which is what actually caused his obsession with UFOs. The defense always said the same thing: he is not a criminal, he is a sick person who is simply looking for the truth. But the US authorities were adamant. They called him a threat to national security, claiming that his hacks could disrupt military operations, or, even worse, expose all the weaknesses of the US advanced agencies.
Chapter 5. The legal battle and public support.
The legal battle lasted for 10 years, from 2002 to 2012. The US put pressure on Britain, demanding Gary's extradition. His lawyers fought like lions. They proved that extradition would destroy his psyche. Asperger's syndrome made Gary vulnerable. He fell into depression, was afraid of prison, because he thought that he simply would not be able to survive there.
In 2008, he began to have panic attacks, he almost never left the house. The public rallied behind him. Hacker forums were buzzing with headlines like “Solo Hero.” He had shown how weak their system was. Tens of thousands of signatures were collected on petitions for his release. Protests in London took place, with activists holding up banners reading “Free Gary.” Even the rock band Pink Floyd and their frontman David Gilman supported him, mentioning him in an interview.
The media dubbed him the UFO hacker, making him a legend. “He’s not a terrorist, he’s a truth seeker,” The Guardian wrote. In 2012, British Home Secretary Theresa May made a historic decision. She blocked Gary’s extradition, citing his mental health and risk of suicide. It was the first time Britain had refused to extradite a hacker to the US. Gary avoided prison, but remained under supervision.
He was banned from using the internet without permission, and his life became a series of checks and restrictions.
Chapter 6. Aftermath and Legacy.
Gary McKinnon's story changed the world of cybersecurity. The Pentagon and NASA spent millions of dollars protecting their networks, patching the vulnerabilities he exploited. His hack inspired programs like "Hack the Pentagon," where hackers are paid to find holes in the system.
Gary became a symbol for some heroes who challenged the system, for others - a criminal who compromised security. But he always insisted and repeated: "I wanted the truth, not the glory," he told the BBC in 2015. He still believes that he found traces of a UFO, but to this day he has no evidence. Gary lives a quiet life in London. He gives lectures on cybersecurity and autism, but the Internet is forbidden to him.
His story is a lesson. Genius and curiosity can open any door, but one mistake can end it all. If he always used VPN, didn't leave notes and changed nicknames, maybe he wouldn't have been caught.
Be sure to leave a comment under this topic. Bye.
