Feds: Ex-IT Exec A HackerFeds: Ex-IT Exec A Hacker

A former IT executive at publishing company SourceMedia has been arrested and charged with hacking into the company’s network, reading confidential E-mails, and tipping off employees who were in line to be laid off.

Stevan Hoffacker, 53, of Queens, N.Y., has been charged with one count of unauthorized access to a protected computer network. If convicted, he faces a maximum sentence of five years in federal prison and a fine of $250,000. Hoffacker pleaded not guilty to the charges in Manhattan federal court and was released on a $50,000 bond.

According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, three years after Hoffacker was dismissed from SourceMedia, he broke into the system, read E-mails regarding a pending layoff, and then E-mailed two employees from a Yahoo account alerting them that they might lose their jobs.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office said the FBI traced the E-mails and the hack back to Hoffacker using several techniques: data logs that contain identifying information about computers that access the company’s network remotely; records from Hoffacker’s cable modem service provider; and records from Yahoo.

Hoffacker allegedly hacked into SourceMedia’s network on "various occasions."

Hoffacker worked for SourceMedia, the New York-based publisher of the Bond Buyer, American Banker, and other financial titles, between 1997 and his termination in 2003. As director of IT and later VP of technology, he reportedly had access to the passwords for the E-mail accounts of SourceMedia employees.