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NetSuite hacker thrown in the cooler for a year, fined $124,000

Run SQLmap, get sent to the big house

A hacker has been jailed for a year and fined $124,000 (£86,000) after admitting he infiltrated a protected computer system.

He has also had all his computer equipment confiscated and faces a three-year probation period when he gets out.

Robert Saunders, 30, repeatedly hacked into the corporate network of cloud business software company NetSuite over several months in 2012.

He was arrested in 2014 and charged with four counts of intentional damage to a protected computer and one count of obtaining information from a protected computer. In 2016, that was expanded to include two counts of "possession of a firearm in interstate commerce while unlawfully using a controlled substance."

In a plea bargain reached this month, Saunders pleaded guilty to just one charge of intentional damage. He was facing a maximum 15-year jail sentence and a $500,000 fine.

Among the things he got up to, Saunders changed demo account details that locked out a potential client, and posted "offensive content" in a different company's test account. NetSuite, based in San Mateo, California, claims the hacking cost it $189,000 to fix the accounts and restore its systems.

Saunders is from San Jose, California, but was arrested in Portland, Oregon, following an arrest warrant issued by a grand jury that found him responsible for grabbing 15,000 email addresses and passwords using the database-probing sqlmap tool. ®

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