Hacker Lamo Surrenders To Face Federal ChargesHacker Lamo Surrenders To Face Federal Charges

Hacker Adrian Lamo, 22, surrendered to federal authorities in California on Tuesday to face charges stemming from his alleged breach of The New York Times network in February 2002.

Patty Pontello, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney's Office, confirmed that Lamo surrendered to the U.S. Marshall's Service at federal court in Sacramento. Lamo was booked and is scheduled to appear before U.S. Magistrate Judge Gregory Hollows Tuesday afternoon, Pontello said. Pontello expects Lamo will be sent to New York to face the charges against him.

Lamo became famous following his widely publicized hacks into corporations such as Yahoo, WorldCom, ExciteAtHome, and the New York Times. At the Times, Lamo allegedly breached the company's internal network and accessed a database holding the personal information of 3,000 employees, as well as that of many famous editorial contributors, including Jimmy Carter and Robert Redford.

In all of these breaches, Lamo would hack into the business' network and then contact the company and offer free help to fix the security lapse that enabled his entry. He held off going public with information about the breaches until the holes were patched. Many companies that Lamo hacked into expressed gratitude for his actions. In the days following the WorldCom hack, spokeswoman Jennifer Baker thanked Lamo for working with the company's security team to fix the misconfigured router that made his entry possible.

The New York Times wasn't so pleased. "We consider the breach of The New York Times Company's internal corporate network in February 2002 to be a serious security matter, and have been cooperating with the FBI and local authorities in their investigation of Adrian Lamo," The New York Times Company said in a statement provided by spokeswoman Christine Mohan.