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James Wieland went to court Jan. 30 after being charged with aggravated criminal invasion of computer privacy at the University of Maine.
Police say Wieland sent out e-mails to roughly 1,000 FirstClass accounts. More than 200 of the recipients downloaded a keystroke logging program via an attached file which appeared to be sent from an acquaintance of the recipient.
Wieland is currently out on bail, and is scheduled to return to court in May.
According to the investigators, this program enabled Wieland to see the people’s online activities. Wieland gained access to an increasing number of accounts through the program.
Most of the affected e-mail accounts belong to students, not to faculty or staff.
Wieland was majoring in business at UMaine from fall 2000 until spring 2008.
Wieland’s hacking spree is believed to have begun in or before August 2007 and continued to the week of his arrest on Nov. 12, 2008.
Police tracked IP addresses to determine that Wieland was the primary suspect. To date, he is the only suspect.
Deputy District Attorney of Bangor, Michael Roberts, is presenting the case to the grand jury, according to the director of Public Safety, Noel March. Each of the more than 200 instances of the program’s download are considered individual felonies, according to March.
“Courts seldom charge all 200 felonies, but they do keep the more serious ones. Wieland’s case falls in line with the cybercrime that is increasingly common these days, and unfortunately, even Maine is not immune to it,” March said.
Attempts to contact Wieland and Roberts were unsuccessful.
“We are being cautious. At the time of the hacking, we sent out one mailing to each of the affected accounts to warn them of what was going on,” Gregory said.
Gregory said the recent FirstClass-wide prompt to change passwords has nothing to do with this case.
“This is just an attempt to keep FirstClass secure, although it does help to keep the case in mind as we work to make the program safer,” said Executive Director of IT John Gregory .
March also gave a list of safety precautions to help everyone stay safe online.
“Do not open e-mails with any attachment that ends in ‘.exe.’ This stands for ‘executable program’ and the person who sent the e-mail can put the program on your computer. The person can see what you are doing,” March said.
March also said to beware of advance-fee fraud scams, also known as “Nigerian scams.” These are successful when the target is persuaded to give a large sum of money in the hope of receiving much more in return. “Nigerian scams” are called such because they originated in Nigeria in the early 1980s.
In addition, March recommends people beware of any e-mail with extremely bad spelling. Sometimes this is indicative of a “phishing scam,” which attempts to make one think that he or she is accessing a legitimate program or Web site when he or she is not.
“Above all, do not give out any personal information over e-mail,” March said.
Bangor Daily News