Remember the 25-year old truck driver who called himself “Evil” and hacked his way into Platform Networks a few months back? He’s been trialled and sentenced this week in an Orange court (the place, not the colour), and now he’s off to jail.
David Cecil plead guilty to 20 different charges and as a result, is going to jail for two -and-a-half years with a one-year non-parole period.
The story hit the mainstream media like a tidal wave almost a year ago to the day that an “Evil” hacker had schemed, wormed and hacked his way into the National Broadband Network itself. OH NO YOU GUYS.
But, surprise surprise, it wasn’t all that in the end.
The risk to the NBN was, obviously, negligible, seeing as how Platform Networks hadn’t actually started offering services to anyone yet. The hack was actually Cecil’s attempt to get noticed.
The confusion was so great at one point that the National Broadband Network Company CEO Mike Quigley issued a statement, putting erroneous media outlets on notice in an interview with ABC Radio:
I’d like to be absolutely clear about this hacking incident that took place with Platform Networks and I’d like to respond to what is a bunch of provocative headlines that I’ve seen over the last 24 hours.
Headlines such as “Self taught hacker charged over NBN attack” which came from the ABC or “NBN hack charges” from The Daily Telegraph, or “More arrests to come over NBN hacking” which was in The Australian. Or even as I saw this morning, Sky News and the “NBN hacking scandal”.
I want to be very clear if I can with you listeners; the NBN was not hacked. It has not been compromised. It hasn’t been placed at risks and our security hasn’t been breached. So each one of these headlines is wrong.