Judge admits envy for hacker's skills (From Western Telegraph)

Judge admits envy for hacker's skills

Computer hacker Raphael Gray, who charged Microsoft boss Bill Gates for a course of Viagra, was saved from jail yesterday by a 'cool dude' judge who said he envied his skills.

Judge Gareth Davies, the only judge to use a lap top on the Welsh circuit, said Gray, aged 19, deserved jail for publishing the credit card details of thousands of internet shoppers.

But he accepted that Gray was still suffering the effects of the playground fall at the age of 14 when he set out to teach the internet a lesson. Gray plundered so many sites on the worldwide web he found himself on the FBIs Most Wanted List.

Using an £800 PC World computer at his home in Clynderwen, he extracted the credit card details of 23,000 people who had traded over the internet and published almost 6,000 of them in cyberspace.

He admitted six offences under the Computer Misuse Act and six of obtaining goods by deception. He was ordered to carry out a three-year community rehabilitation order and to undergo psychiatric treatment.

Judge Davies told Swansea Crown Court he took into account a medical report on Gray and told him that he 'envied' the teenager's skills with computers.

Gray dubbed himself Curador, Welsh for custodian, and boasted about his one-man campaign to expose a lack of security on the web. He even used Gates' credit card number to send him a course of Viagra because he believed a Microsoft programme was responsible for site insecurity.

The campaign caused havoc and at one point an FBI chief was called before a special Congressional hearing to explain what was being done to catch Gray.

He was eventually tracked down to his home by a team formed by the FBI, Royal Canadian Mounted Police and British detectives. By then it had cost VISA £250,000 to re-issue thousands of credit cards.

Judge Davies told Gray yesterday that he would have sent him to jail but for a psychiatrist's report into the effects of falling down five years ago and banging his head.

Dr Christopher Moyle, a consultant psychiatrist, said Gray suffered low self esteem and depression because of the injury and this had developed into a psychotic illness.

Gray's barrister, Colin Nicholls, QC, explained how Gray developed depression and dyslexia and an interest in computers. He then instigated a computer course at school and within a year was so advanced that he was allowed to enrol in an adult computer course at Swansea College.

Gray was then struck down with glandular fever and developed 'an obsessive' involvement with computers while recovering at home.

Judge Davies told him: 'You have computer skills which many, including myself, envy. You attacked e-commerce sites to show a security weakness in the Microsoft Internet Information Server programme but what you did was not the same as someone introducing a virus into a system.'

The judge ordered the confiscation of the computer by Gray. Afterwards Gray said: 'The judge is a cool dude. I did the right thing in exposing how easy it was to get these credit card details. The people concerned were lucky I was not a bandit from Colombia, because I could have made a fortune.

'I was offered a large amount of money to put the details on to a compact disc and send it to a certain individual in America, but I refused, even though I needed the money,' he said.

The teenager, who lives with his mother Elizabeth Von Hippel and sisters Muchti, 15 and Yoga Mayo Amadeus, 12, said he would now consider the many job offers he had received.

Raphael Gray, who published the credit card details of 6,000 people on the internet.

PICTURE: Martin Cavaney Photography.