The original charges against him could have landed Mitnick a 100-year jail term, his lawyer Donald C. Randolph of Long Beach, Calif., said Friday. In March, Mitnick pleaded guilty to four felony counts of wire fraud and one count of computer fraud, also a felony. On July 12, he is scheduled to be sentenced to 46 months. With time served, he could be released to a halfway house 11 days later, Randolph said. Quantifying the monetary loss to hacking is another guessing game.
Some estimates put the annual cost of hacking in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
And the passing of time has made it increasingly difficult to come up with an accurate profile of the hackers themselves. The traditional picture of malicious hackers as pimply young males with computers and too much time on their hands must now be broadened to include corporate spies, organized crime figures, international terrorists and agents of foreign governments. Every week there are tens of thousands of attempts to hack into military computer systems, said Weldon.