That's a reasonable concern to have, but it's worth being aware that it's the exact same concern people had about Hans Reiser. Intelligence and judgement are orthogonal, and sometimes even in slight opposition.

If you want to consider a different perspective: I'm an example of someone who does not have a hard time understand how someone who has enjoyed the rush of getting over on the entire media industry from behind a computer screen might find it harmless or at least personally safe to hack into some dumb server on the Internet and read documents off it.

I've been a pentester for the last 10 years and in my experience, taking advantage of the knowledge of how to break into an application is an urge that takes some energy to suppress.

The local police force here has a test to see if you 'have what it takes' to be a part of their cyber security squad or whatever they call it. On a lark I took part in it (the test was pretty simple, at least, that's what I thought). After taking the test (and knowing full well I had no intention to follow through on applying for a job with them, I just can't look at puzzles without getting this itch to solve them) I realized I may have just given out some information that I had better keep to myself, which is to advertise a capability.

Having a capability and advertising it is already stupid in my book, and more the fool I am I slipped up there. But having such a capability, subsequently approaching machines that you have no permission for, repeatedly attempting to gain access, succeeding at that and then to actually retrieve data that you have no right to when you're already in a position of extreme suspicion with the authorities to me borders on the insane. I really can't understand even for one second why someone as gifted as this would act in this way, it is something I've been wondering about with a lot of these so called hackers. What drives them to do this, obviously the downsides of successfully showing off their skill end up in a head-on collision with forces they can't possibly hope to defeat.

It's all fun and games until the SWAT team arrives.

Have there been any studies on the psychology of people that are pathologically drawn to breaking in to other people's computer systems?

Easy: breaking into computers is very, very fun, and when something feels like a game, it's easy to treat it that way.

If you have a hard time believing anyone would do something like this, look at the 1990s: we got a book practically every year about one hacking group or another breaking into phone switches, credit reporting agencies, government and military networks, and financial institutions. If you can do it, and you're unlikely to get caught --- and you are very unlikely to ever get caught --- why not? Plenty of smart people did stuff like this. Plenty of them.

The most interesting stories from that era did not get written up. Kevin Mitnick didn't write the TCP sequencer. Kevin Mitnick couldn't sequence an ordered array of integers if it was #defined for him in advance.

> Plenty of smart people did stuff like this.

I know, I know a couple of them. I just don't understand them. Why cross that line? Why risk jail, your career, a whole pile of hardship? The real life consequences is what I'm wondering about, it's as if there is some kind of disconnect there between action and subsequent consequences.

If it is only because it is 'unlikely that you're ever going to get caught' then that's a gamblers argument. (I don't understand gamblers either, so that might be an explanation right there.)

To some extent I think it’s ”wired in”. Individuals vary a lot when it comes to risk awareness and risk tolerance. Take drugs for example. Some people will order new synthetic drugs from shady webshops without without batting an eye. Others will never touch anything else than alcohol.

> Why cross that line? Why risk jail, your career, a whole pile of hardship?

I think part of it is age, maybe. Or rather life-experience, if you will.

I remember back in my early 20s what always stopped me was basic paranoia about getting caught. But that's just how I'm wired personally (and I was probably slightly irrational about the odds). I love breaking, bending and toying with the rules, but too chicken to pull through if it involved anything more serious than a silly prank on friends.

Nowadays (mid-30s), the first thing that stops me is a much more solid sense of what's right and wrong. I prefer it that way, because unlike fear of getting caught, it's a much more solid foundation to depend on.

I live in Phnom Penh and I know some people who were acquainted with Gottfried. Without gossiping too much about him, some stories I've heard definitely characterize his behavior as "bordering on the insane".

Intelligence can be a burden. Everyone has outlets. Don't be so judgemental.

I am not judging him at all. He sounds like someone I would like a lot. I have had addiction problems in the past, and so some of my past behavior could have rightly been called insane too.

Could not agree more. There's always that voice in the back of your head wondering why you got a funky error message when your input contained an apostrophe; it doesn't take a lot to tip over the edge into something risky, even if you're conscious of the attention on you.

Yep. You train a lot of app pentesters and you get used to warning them: do not try this at home. You know you can just edit a URL in your browser by just a couple characters and poof be an admin. It should would be interesting to find out what it's like to be an admin on this site... oh, wait, if I do that I might end up talking to a prosecutor.

That's obviously not a normative description. I don't think it's good that the world works like that, although I probably blame different people than most of HN.

Anyways, point being: the assumption that a very smart person wouldn't dream of breaking into a government server: does not at all square with my experience. Doesn't make the assumption wrong; it's just a data point.

> I don't think it's good that the world works like that, although I probably blame different people than most of HN.

Who do you blame, out of curiosity?

>> the pair downloaded police and social security files. > What exactly are those? and what would he even want them for?

The mainframe logs show that a dataset containing a copy of the Schengen SIS was downloaded from the hacked mainframe. I don't know if the file was even found on mr Svartholm's computer. The prosecutors just concluded that they couldn't tell what happened with the datat that had been copied out from the system and therefore mr Svartholm probably did something evil with it.

So what's in Schengen SIS? It's a list of personal details for more than 1 million(!!) people that are either wanted by participating states, under surveillance or people that just lost their passports or other identity documents. You can read more here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schengen_Information_System#Da...

The government of course would like to claim that the data managed in Schengen SIS is extremly sensitive. Meanwhile they ship this data over the internet with plaintext FTP to various entities participating in Schengen SIS on a monthly basis (updates etc).

>> In a separate trial in 2013, Mr Warg and accomplice were found guilty of breaking into the computer systems of computer services firm Logica, which was doing work for Sweden's tax office and a bank. > Again, why would he hack into a bank knowing so many eyes are on him?

He was completely acquitted of the charges involving Nordea Bank in the Court of Appeals (Hovratten).

Prior to the trial against The Pirate Bay, when the police raided the ISP he was running with some partners, he was online and complained about it on a Swedish forum for web masters. Basically bragging about how they would never find any dirt on him, how the prosecutor was stupid, police were stupid and that "torrent linking site" just happened to be colocated on his servers.

I could link to it, but it's in Swedish and pseudonyms were used so you probably wouldn't get so much out of it.

My point is that complaining about your equipment being seized on an internet forum is not a smart thing to do.

Please link it.

Actually, it's not hard to believe as Gottfrid is Anakata aka early '90s swedish scene / old school #hackse@efnet. This background along with his anti-government/privacy/free speech philosophies ultimately lead to founding of the swedish bulletproof ISP - PeRiQuito AB - ie. The Pirate Bay, Sunshine Press (WikiLeaks) and the North American Man/Boy Love Association.

Have you read Ghost in the Wires? Mitnick was insatiable.