The UK's NASA hacker 39-year-old Gary McKinnon has broken his silence since being caught, and has shed some light on his illegal hacking activities. McKinnon, who is accused of hacking US Army, Navy, Air Force and NASA computers, has highlighted poor security as a major factor in his ability to wander through the IT systems of what are meant to be some of the most secure organisations in the world.

"You get on to easy networks, like Support and Logistics, in order to exploit the trust relationship that military departments have between each other, and once you get on to an easy thing, you find out what networks they trust and then you hop and hop and hop, and eventually you think, 'That looks a bit more secretive'," McKinnon told The Guardian.
Even more interestingly, McKinnon claims to have been able to access the US' Space Command network, where he found evidence of an extra terrestrial mission.

"I found a list of officers' names," he claims, "under the heading 'Non-Terrestrial Officers'... What I think it means is not earth-based. I found a list of 'fleet-to-fleet transfers' and a list of ship names. I looked them up. They weren't US Navy ships. What I saw made me believe they have some kind of spaceship, off-planet."
McKinnon faces many charges, some of which are alleging "fraud and related activity in connection with computers" covering the US Army, Navy, Air Force and NASA. Some of the most serious allegations are that he did intentionally cause damage without authorisation by impairing the integrity and availability of data, programs systems and information. If found guilty (and do you really think he won't be?) he faces huge fines and years and years in jail.

Articles: Silicon.com, ZDNET, more ZDNET.