Minnesota Man Admits He Hacked Neighbor's WiFi to Impersonate Him

[tipo]

A 45-year-old man from Blaine, Minnesota, pleaded guilty to various offenses stemming from hacking into his neighbor's wireless network and sending death threats to the Vice President of the United States.

According to the Minnesota United States Attorney's Office, two days into his trial, Barry Vincent Ardolf pleaded guilty to two counts of aggravated identity theft, one count of distribution of child pornography, one count of possession of child pornography, one count of unauthorized access to a protected computer, and one count of making threats to the President and successors to the presidency.

Ardolf was indicted on June 23, 2010, after an investigation conducted by the Minnesota Cyber Crimes Task Force, which sees the participation of the FBI, U.S. Secret Service, the Blaine Police Department and the Anoka County Sheriff’s Office.

Ardolf admitted that in February of 2009, he hacked into the wireless network of his neighbor and created Yahoo! email accounts using his name.

He then used the rogue Internet connection and one of the fake mailboxes to send death threats to the Vice President of the United States, a Minnesota U.S. Senator and the state's Governor.

The emails were signed in the name of the neighbor and his wife and read: "This is a terrorist threat! Take this seriously. I hate the way you people are spending money you don’t have....

"I’m assigning myself to be judge jury and executioner. Since you folks have spent what you don’t have it’s time to pay the ultimate price. Time for new officials after you all are put to death by us...."

The email was send on May 6, 2009 and claimed that the first official will be dead by June 1. Ardolf's intention was for the message to be traced back to his neighbor and get him arrested.

In addition, the fake Yahoo! accounts were used to send emails with explicit adult content to three of his target's work colleagues.

One of them contained an image that falls into the child pornography category. The same picture was also posted on a MySpace account he created in the neighbor's name.

"For his crimes, Ardolf faces a potential maximum penalty of 20 years in prison on the distribution of child pornography charge, ten years on the possession of child pornography charge, five years on both the unauthorized access to a computer and the threats to the Vice President charges, and a mandatory two-year minimum prison sentence on each count of aggravated identity theft," the Department of Justice said [pdf].

The case serves as a strong reminder that people need to take the security of their wireless connections very seriously. A study conducted recently in the UK, revealed that nearly half of all home WiFi networks can be hacked in a matter of seconds with freely available tools.

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[myidisbb]

iddy porn and a demcorat. go figure. i bet his mac address from his computer was all over the stuff he sent out. thats what got him. hope the nieghbor sues his azz too for everything

[HX1]

Not for sure where you get democrat from.. BUT yeah I hope this one doesn't see the light of day for awhile..

[jtmulc]

iddy porn and a demcorat. go figure. i bet his mac address from his computer was all over the stuff he sent out. thats what got him. hope the nieghbor sues his azz too for everything

Where does it say he's a Democrat? To quote the article:

Ardolf admitted that in February of 2009, he hacked into the wireless network of his neighbor and created Yahoo! email accounts using his name.

He then used the rogue Internet connection and one of the fake mailboxes to send death threats to the Vice President of the United States, a Minnesota U.S. Senator and the state's Governor.

That would be threats to Joe Biden (Democrat), either Senator Amy Klobuchar or Senator Al Franken (both Democrats), and Tim Pawlenty (Republican). He's an equal opportunity asshole. The Secret Service probably loved it. "What? A death threat against BIDEN? That's a new one."

EDIT: Al Franken was not sworn in as Senator until July 2009, therefore the threats must have been made to Amy Klobuchar