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"A hacker in the US has been handed a three-and-a-half-year prison sentence for taking personal data of iPad users from AT&amp;amp;T&amp;#039;s servers.  But campaign groups, such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), have pledged to help Andrew Auernheimer, aka Weev, fight his sentence.   Auernheimer, 26, of Fayetteville, Arkansas, was charged with federal crimes in the US for obtaining the personal data of more than 1000,000 iPad users held on AT&amp;amp;T&amp;#039;s publicly accessible website. He was convicted last November in a federal court in New Jersey on one count of identity fraud, and one count of conspiracy to access a computer without authorisation.  On Monday (March 18), he was sentenced to 41 months in prison, followed by three years of supervised release. Auernheimer was accused of creating a computer program that could harvest information using a security vulnerability in AT&amp;amp;T&amp;#039;s website. He and an accomplice contacted the Gawker website to report the security flaw, and handed over the data as proof of the hack, claiming that they were calling public attention to the threat to personal information.   Gawker reported at the time that the flaw was flagged up by a group calling itself Goatse Security. But AT&amp;amp;T maintained that it was never contacted about the vulnerability by Auernheimer or Goatse Security, and had only learned about the problem from a &amp;quot;business customer&amp;quot;. Following Auernheimer&amp;#039;s conviction yesterday, the EFF confirmed that it has joined the team working on his appeal.  &amp;quot;Weev&amp;#039;s case shows just how problematic the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act is,&amp;quot; EFF staff attorney Hanni Fakhoury said in a statement to Wired.  &amp;quot;We look forward to reversing the trial court&amp;#039;s decision on appeal. In the meantime, Congress should amend the CFAA to make sure we don&amp;#039;t have more [late Reddit co-founder] Aaron Swartzs and Andrew Auernheimers in the future.&amp;quot; Some people have expressed concern that the security research industry could be targeted following Auernheimer&amp;#039;s conviction, as similar approaches are often used to expose vulnerabilities at major companies.  Computer security researcher Charlie Miller tweeted: &amp;quot;We could all go to jail for security research at any moment, and a jury would happily convict us.&amp;quot; "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.digitalspy.com/tech/news/a466781/att-hacker-sentenced-to-long-prison-term-in-the-us/>