Australian Teen Hacks Apple, Downloads Files to Folder Called 'hacky hack hack'

The Australian newspaper, The Age, reported that the private school student had ambitions of working for Apple. He will now face charges next month. Hopefully, his fate will go the way of James Kosta.

Kosta goes from teen delinquent to millionaire

The teen hacker from the US was arrested at age 14 by an FBI tactical team for hacking into the systems of major banks, GE and IBM. Luckily for Kosta, the judge decided against the 45-year jail term and instead gave Kosta the option to join the army.

This led to a career in the CIA and then a stint as a tech entrepreneur that earned him millions. These days Kosta heads 3G Studios Inc., a video game business that is rumored to make about $10.5 million revenue each year.

Unfortunately, not all teen hacker stories turn out this way. Jonathan James was the first teen in the US incarcerated for cybercrime. At age 15, he was jailed for his first offense. 

His hacker career started small, gaining access to his local school system, but it soon escalated and he accessed computers of the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, a division of the United States Department of Defense. The Agency’s prime role was to analyze potential threats to the United States of America, both at home and abroad. 

James given second chance but lost faith in system

James admitted to installing an unauthorized backdoor access to the Agency’s network and used it to intercept over three thousand messages passing to and from DTRA employees, along with numerous usernames.

He also managed to steal the source code for the International Space Station according to NASA, "the software supported the International Space Station's physical environment, including control of the temperature and humidity within the living space."

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James managed to achieve this incredible intrusion using only his home Pentium computer. He managed to get only a lenient sentence due to his young age.

In 2007, the massive chain TJX was hacked compromising the personal and credit information of millions of customers. Due to James’s close relation to the hackers, he was investigated in the crime but no connection was found.

A year later, Jonathan James committed suicide convinced he would be charged with hacker offenses related to the TJX compromise that he did not do. According to Wikipedia, James wrote in his suicide note, "I have no faith in the 'justice' system. Perhaps my actions today, and this letter, will send a stronger message to the public. Either way, I have lost control over this situation, and this is my only way to regain control."