Jailhouse Confessions of a Teen Hacker

This kid was not a silver tongued charismatic con man able to dupe and swindle victims, he was taking advantage of ignorance, incompetence, and bad management. his criminal skill consisted of being able to repeatedly and shamelessly call people and repeat a plausible script. High school drama club skills - not "hacked the school server to give everyone 4.1 GPA" skills.

I can grab a clipboard and safety vest and get almost anywhere in the world, even sounding awkward and not particularly smooth, because people expect IT and technician types to show up and be given access to nearly anywhere. "Hi, I'm from IT, I need to get to the phone line/computer in back/ network cable for the display" - people are gullible and ignorant, and the "hackers" that figure out that fact get away with outrageous things based on that alone.

They farmed out these low level social engineering tasks to dozens or even hundreds of participants whose only "skill" was to learn that "one little trick" which broke the security model of all those corporations and departments. That's how law enforcement swept this guy up, because he was not technically proficient or particularly good at what he was doing, from a security standpoint.

10 years of prison is definitely going to mature this person - all I'm saying is that I wish the best for him, because ultimately, that's what best for all of us. I hope he finds a purpose and meaning in life that obliterates the superficial exploitation of people that landed him in prison, and makes the world a better place for his family and community when he gets out. If he can still think of himself as wanting to be a good person, to be better than he was, then I think there's probably hope.

If he was completely unrepentant and unwilling to be accountable, it'd be different - No credit at all to him, I'm just hoping for the best and recognizing that possibility seems to still exist for him.

He literally says he has regrets in the first sentence of the paragraph.

> All that around is just PR, he's a serial manipulator and there's no reason to believe that he's suddenly changed after such a short period of time.

Maybe. That's you opinion. I'm not a mind reader, and I don't really care. Plenty of white-collar criminals get much lighter sentences for stealing much more money.

Getting to the level of a well-adjusted 30-yo is much harder if you're spending that time behind bars.

After prison people think of you as a convict, regardless of age. That doesn't generally make life easier.

I’ve literally never heard of such a thing. I have trouble believing this is actually true, especially given there’s no way to select for it on the exchanges.