00:00Did you know a 15-year-old once forced NASA to shut down its systems from his bedroom?
00:04His name was Jonathan James.
00:06Online, he called himself C0M Mander.
00:09In 1999, he was living in Florida, and he was breaking into computers that belonged to
00:15the United States government.
00:16One target was the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, part of the Pentagon.
00:20James installed a backdoor, which is a hidden way into a system that skips normal security.
00:25It let him read employee emails and capture usernames and passwords.
00:28Then he got into NASA.
00:30The systems he reached held software that supported the International Space Station.
00:34NASA shut down its systems for about three weeks.
00:37The reported cost was roughly $41,000.
00:41Investigators caught up with him.
00:42He became the first juvenile sent to prison for cybercrime in the United States.
00:46It showed how weak government security could be in the 90s.
00:49A teenager had simply walked in.
00:51Then came 2008.
00:52James was named in the investigation into the TJX data breach.
00:55He denied any involvement, and his guilt was never proven.
00:59He died by suicide at only 24.
01:01He left a note saying he was not involved.
01:04A brilliant kid, in a system that only knew how to punish him.
01:07He gave the Copyright Trust, but he had a friend.
