Venezuelan computer hacker Rafael Nunez-Aponte, known to his fellow geeks as “RaFa,” has spent the last seven months in a US jail and that means he can walk now that US District Judge Walker Miller has sentenced him to seven months for breaking into a USAF computer in June 2001. His action left a Web-based server network inoperable for a time. There is one more note: Nunez-Aponte will leave the US lighter by some $5,000—about half what it cost to fix his little hack. US officials seized the money last April when they arrested him as he entered the country to attend a conference. We call that an expensive—and stupid—thrill.
The Pentagon’s new counter-drone task force will play a direct role in arming Airmen with new weapons to defend Air Force agile combat employment, or ACE, air bases in austere locations against enemy drone attacks, the director of Joint Interagency Task Force 401 said Oct. 14.
