Hacker convicted by court of stealing the personal data of 120,000 AT&T Apple iPad users

On Tuesday, a Federal Court jury found 27 year old Andrew Auernheimer guilty of one count of conspiracy to access AT&T's servers without permission, as well as one count of identity theft. Auernheimer and a co-defendant were accused of hacking into the carrier's servers and stole email addresses and personal information belonging to 120,000 AT&T customers using the Apple iPad. The co-defendant, Daniel Spitler, pleaded guilty last year and is awaiting sentencing. Aurenheimer can receive 5 years in prison and a $250,000 fine for each count that he was convicted of, while Spitler is asking for a lighter 12-18 month sentence citing his cooperation..

Mug shot of defendant Andrew Auernheimer

Auernheimer and Spitler were part of a group of internet trolls called Goatse Security, and according to the prosecution, the pair used an "account slurper" that matched email addresses with "integrated circuit card identifiers" for Apple iPad users, and used a "brute force" attack to gsather information and data about those who used their iPad over AT&T's pipeline. To prove that they had obtained personal records for ABC News anchor Diane Sawyer, New York Mayor Michael Bloombergand current Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, some of the information was leaked to Gawker who published a story about the stolen information.

Aurenheimer is free on bail and his lawyer says he plans on appealing to the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia. After it's servers were compromised, AT&T shut down the feature on the Apple iPad that allowed email addresses to be obtained.

"We disagree with the prosecutors' interpretation of what constitutes unauthorized access to a computer under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act."=Tor Ekeland, defendant's lawyer