Hacking Nets Main Line Man Prison Time: U.S. Attorney

A Man Line hacker was sentenced to just over a year in prison Wednesday after pleading guilty to two counts of unauthorized access to a protected computer, according to Acting United States Attorney Louis D. Lappen.

Adam Flanagan, 42, of Bala Cynwyd, was sentenced to 12 months and one day in prison based on his plea of guilty to two counts of unauthorized access to a protected computer and thereby recklessly causing damage, Lappen's office said.

Flanagan was indicted on Nov. 22, 2016, arrested without incident on Nov. 23, 2016, and pleaded guilty on March 7, 2017, according to Lappen's office.

Flanagan worked as a radio frequency engineer for a company that made remote meter readers for utility systems, Lappen's office said.

The readers would receive radio signals from individual meters and then process the data for billing. In these instances, the remote readers were installed to read water meters in municipalities spread throughout the eastern United States. After the company fired Flanagan, he used his knowledge of how these readers operate to gain access to them through the Internet and to disable them, Lappen's office said.

This resulted in municipal water authorities sending people out to read the individual meters because the billing data was inaccurate. Additionally, Flanagan’s former employer had to expend a large amount of time to conduct forensic examinations of the readers to determine what had happened and how to fix the problems, Lappen's office said.

The advisory Sentencing Guidelines provide for enhanced sentences for attacks on computers involved with critical infrastructure, such as water systems, according to Lappen's office. The presiding judge applied the enhancement for interfering with computers used to maintain or operate a critical infrastructure, Lappen's office said.

The case was investigated by the FBI offices in Raleigh, North Carolina and Philadelphia. The investigation was initially handled by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of North Carolina and then transferred to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, when the defendant was identified as the intruder. Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael L. Levy handled the case.

Image via Shutterstock