Why Hackers Hack: Facebook Hacker Tells His Side of the Story

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Hackers exploit systems for many reasons. Some hack just for the heck of it while others might have a more noble purpose (although the way they're going about it is still wrong.)

It's rare for hackers to open up to the public and let people know what they were thinking or why they chose to hack into someone's systems. Knowing that, you might want to check out this video of 26-year-old hacker Glenn Steven Mangham telling his side of the story.

In case you missed it in the news, Mangham hacked into Facebook from his bedroom at his parents' house around two months ago. Long story short, he was caught, sentenced to 8 months in jail, but is now out early because he won an appeal. And now, he wants to tell everyone why he did what he did and what he thinks about what he did.

Strictly speaking what I did broke the law because at the time and subsequently it was not authorised, I was working under the premise that sometimes it is better to seek forgiveness than to ask permission, It is possible to offer up information and get a company to retroactively authorise actions so that they become legal. This is an approach I have used with some success in the past. In any case it was my choice to take this risk and I made a bit of a mess out of the project.

-- Glenn Steven Mangham

Glenn also defends himself in the video, explaining that he's not the malicious hacker that Facebook CSO Joe Sullivan tried to paint him as.

It is also worth mentioning that I had the source code for just over three weeks with absolutely nothing to prevent me from making copies and redistributing it, this was more than enough time to have caused significant damage to Facebook or to find a buyer, if that had ever actually been my intention but quite clearly it was not.

I also do not accept that the risk was significantly increased by my actions, almost nobody knew of the existence of my copy and it was physically detached from the Internet, in many respects it was better secured than the original. So just in case anyone is unclear at the point I am driving at here, these are not the actions of someone who is being malicious, I would argue quite the opposite.

-- Glenn Steven Mangham

The kid sounds smart, although what he did was probably pretty foolish, considering that he was up against Facebook, for crying out loud.

Article by Hazel Chua
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