Commentary: Yahoo! incident ushers in era of the politically motivated hack

(Editor's Note: Jonathan Littman is the author of the Fugitive Game and The Watchman. Both books are about notorious hackers.)

The hackers that struck Yahoo!'s enormously popular Web site on Tuesday did something more than prove their cunning and just how vulnerable our Information Age infrastructure remains. They also gave us a new kind of incident -- and, thus, ushered in the dawn of a new era: Hackers who use intrusions and threats to make a political statement.

It may not have been plainly obvious, but the crude page the hackers used to briefly replace Yahoo!'s regular home page had all the hallmarks of a political communique.

The focus of their manifesto: the plight of Kevin Mitnick, the celebrated hacker in jail awaiting trial. What's more, the content was charged with symbolism. They demanded the hacker be released before Feb. 14, 1998 -- the third anniversary, to the day, of Mitnick's incarceration.

And they threatened that their "logic bomb" would become active come Christmas 1998 -- the fourth anniversary of the day Mitnick allegedly broke into the computers of Tsutomu Shimomura, the San Diego security expert who helped federal agents capture Mitnick.

In the rambling Yahoo! manifesto, the hackers ranted that Mitnick was "wrongly jailed for a crime he did not commit," pursued by an "Orwellian" government and abandoned by a "hypocritical" Electronic Frontier Foundation.

I haven't talked to these hackers. Nor do I know them. But I've followed the Mitnick case closely, having written a book on the subject. I know that Mitnick and his attorney aren't happy with this development, fearing it will only anger his judge.

Most of all, I know why Mitnick's comrades-in-arms may now be taking such extreme actions in his defense. They're convinced there's a growing evidence to call into question the government's conduct in the case.

As the hackers point out, the government hasn't alleged that Mitnick committed any crime for profit. Mitnick stands accused of copying -- but not selling -- software from cellular phone makers. Yet he's been imprisoned for almost three years without trial on the major charges against him.

To date, the judge in Mitnick's case has declined to approve funds for the hacker to hire an expert to refute the government's assertions. And Mitnick's attorneys have alleged that they've had a difficult time viewing much of the government's evidence. Mitnick's requests for more prison library time and greater access to the government's gigabytes of computer evidence have also been denied.

Since Mitnick's capture, attorneys for the hacker have questioned the manner in which the investigation was conducted. One issue: Whether investigators monitored Mitnick without having obtained the requisite federal court permissions.

Of course, like a lot of revolutionaries, the hackers don't have all of their facts straight. They say, for example, that Mitnick has been denied the use of a prison library computer, when no such computer exists.

While there's no defending the Yahoo! intrusion, American history tells us that protests still need to be heard. It's too early to tell whether this recent act will help Mitnick. But it's not too early to say that we're likely to see a lot more of these politically motivated incidents.