A hacker who attempted to extort money – and a well-paid job – from the Marriott hotel group by threatening to expose confidential data has been slapped with 30-month prison sentence in the US.
Attila Nemeth, 26, a Hungarian national, will also serve three years of supervised release following his prison term.
According to court documents, Nemeth informed Marriott officials in November 2010 that he had hacked and stolen information from its computer systems.
He then threatened to release the data he had stolen to Marriott’s rivals or to its employees, or post it publicly if the company did not give him a job. His demands included a job based in Europe paying at least $150,000 (£95,000) annually, a hotel room in any hotel of his choice, free flights to wherever he wanted and the right to work whenever he felt like it.
He wrote: “You fire your incompetent IT staff and hire me as an outside contractor to take care of your IT network security. After my new job works out for a couple of years all the docs I collected from your network going to wanish (sic).”
An undercover US Secret Service agent contacted Nemeth and he agreed to go to the US for an employment interview with Marriott.
The agent, masquerading as the Marriott executive, interviewed the hacker. Nemeth, believing he was speaking with a Marriott executive, disclosed details of how he had gained access to the company’s systems and was arrested on the spot.
