Last chance saloon for NASA hacker

Filed Under: Law & order

Gary McKinnon, who lost his House of Lords appeal against extradition to the United States at the end of July, has been given two extra weeks' breathing space.

The 42-year-old hacker from North London has admitted hacking into computers belonging to the US Army, US Navy, US Air Force, Department of Defense and NASA, but claims he was only looking for evidence of a UFO cover-up by authorities.

Today it was revealed that he has been granted a short stay of execution (whoops!) extradition until 28 August, when the European Court of Human Rights will consider whether it will agree to hear his appeal.

It's hard not to feel sorry for Gary McKinnon. Obviously hacking into US military computers in the weeks after September 11 2001 was demonstrating a remarkable amount of daftness, but it's a tough world which considers his crimes as seriously as the financially-motivated criminals who dominate the internet underground today.

We'll keep you updated as this story develops.

Picture credit: NASA

About the author

Graham Cluley is senior technology consultant at Sophos. The readers of Computer Weekly voted him security blogger of the year in 2009 and 2010, and he pipped Stephen Fry to the title of "Twitter user of the year" too. Which was nice. He was also named "Best Security Blogger" by the readers of SC Magazine in 2011. You can subscribe to Graham's updates on Facebook, follow him on Twitter and circle him on Google Plus for regular updates.