A London teenager has been sentenced to 200 hours of community service for hacking into the computer system of a U.S. physics research laboratory to store his personal collection of music and film files.
Joseph James McElroy, 18, of Woodford Green, told Southwark Crown Court in London on Monday that he hacked into 17 computer systems at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory near Chicago over a two-week period in June 2002 to store and exchange hundreds of gigabytes worth of computer files with his friends.
The U.S. Department of Energy had sought 21,000 pounds in compensation for the breach, which forced technicians to shut down a portion of the computer network for three days, the court was told.
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