News anchor admits to hacking, leaking e-mail's content
A Philadelphia TV news anchor pleaded guilty today to breaking into his co-anchor's e-mail accounts more than 500 times and feeding information he found there to a local newspaper.
Lawrence Mendte, 51, of Philadelphia, made the guilty plea to one felony count of intentionally accessing a protected computer without authorization and obtaining information in furtherance of a tortuous act, according to the US Attorney's Office in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. Mendte, once a popular news anchor at CBS affiliate KYW-TV, secretly accessed one work e-mail account and two personal accounts of co-anchor Alycia Lane between March 2006 and May 2008.
Mendte faces a maximum of five years in prison.
Mendte used his computers at work, at his home and one at his vacation home, to break into the accounts. According to the Department of Justice, Mendte accessed Lane's personal e-mail accounts about 537 times between Jan. 1 and May 26.
Mendte was released from his contract in June following an independent investigation by CBS, according to a story on the KYW Web site.
Lane was let go from the news station in January, according to the Philadelphia Daily News .
The government's Information Document contends that Mendte accessed private communications between Lane and her friends, her attorney and some e-mails between Lane and a friend's wife. Some of the e-mails that were accessed held attorney-client privileged information pertaining to civil and criminal litigation in which Lane was involved.
On several occasions, Mendte shared private and legal information obtained from the stolen e-mail documents with a reporter from the Philadelphia Daily News.
- +
The 2007 security hall of shame 27 December, 2007 07:47:46
Bad breaches, ghastly gaffes and five people we'd like to forgetHow bad was 2007 for breaches, vulnerabilities and similar mayhem? On the bright side, it was better than 2008 is forecast to be. With more of every sort of meltdown predicted -- more criminalization of the hacker community, more Web-application attacks, more phishing, more spamming, more zero-day attacks and more virtualization-related threats -- we're happy to tell you that you are likely to look back on 2007 as the peaceful old days. - +
True crime: The botnet barons 04 January, 2008 07:03:57
Two weeks ago, the feds revealed the names of eight people who had used botnets to engage in nefarious activity. Here are their storiesWhen federal agents announced on November 29 that they'd indicted or convicted eight individuals accused of using botnets (networks of computers infected with Trojan horse applications) to engage in criminal activity, the press release barely explained the nature and extent of the men's crimes -- or the investigations that led to arrests in an operation the FBI and other law enforcement agencies have termed Bot Roast II.
Click here for case studies, whitepapers and other useful vendor content 
ARN Panel Sessions: Day 3The last of our panel sessions recorded live at CeBIT 2008. Today, the topic is storage. Data is growing at an enormous rate, so what does the future hold?
Weekly Tech News Update: 21st November 2008Yahoo's CEO says goodbye, Intel introduces a new processor, and robots run wild. All that news and more on this week's World Tech Update
Electronic voting in U.S. electionDoubts about voting machines are lingering in the minds of many Americans as they head to the polls.
When an IT disaster occurs, how handy it would be to push a button and start again as if nothing had happened.
Discover and learn more about CA XOSoft today.
PGP and Ponemon Institute Unveil Inaugural Australian Data Breach Study 2008 20 November, 2008 17:34:00
Symantec Cloud Services Transform Data Centre Operations Through Proactive Management 20 November, 2008 12:06:00
Verizon Business Offers Tips to Building a Successful Unified Communications and Collaboration Plan 20 November, 2008 12:04:00
NetApp Named 2008 Citrix Ready Solution of the Year by Citrix Systems 20 November, 2008 11:33:00
Extreme Networks Ethernet Transport lowers total cost of ownership for carrier metro networks 20 November, 2008 10:21:00
Bankstown Council streamlines their IT with Microsoft® Windows Server® 2008
Deciding it was time for more streamlined operations, Bankstown Council teamed up with OSS Infotech, a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner. The solution included Microsoft Windows Server, Microsoft SQL Server® and Microsoft Exchange®.
Buying Guides
Latest Products
