Hacker 'Curador' pleads guilty to credit card theft

According to The Register, a London-based technology news site, Curador pleaded guilty to eight separate charges Thursday and faces an undetermined jail sentence.

Curador was bold. Not only did he steal credit card databases and publish them online, he continued to do so even after British and American authorities were hot on his trail. He even called MSNBC.com several times to discuss his loot, and to to poke fun at sloppy computer security administrators. Eventually, he broke into more than a dozen Web sites and posted nearly 30,000 credit card numbers, telephone numbers, names and addresses of e-commerce consumers.

He said he was posting the information to call attention to bad security practices at e-commerce firms. But eventually, he called enough attention to himself that he was found by British authorities, working from his house in Clynderwen in west Wales.

According to The Register, Curador - really 19-year-old Raphael Gray - pleaded guilty Thursday to two charges of obtaining services by deception and six charges of intentionally accessing sites containing credit card details, but without using this information for financial gain.

Sentencing was postponed and Gray was released on bail, The Register said.