Jonathan James: The Teenage Hacker Known as c0mrade

In the summer of 1999, a 15-year-old in Miami downloaded the software that controlled the temperature and humidity aboard the International Space Station. NASA valued it at $1.7 million and shut its systems down for three weeks to work out what had happened.

Jonathan James, known online as c0mrade, had also slipped into a Pentagon agency that assesses nuclear, chemical and biological threats, and quietly read more than 3,300 of its emails. In September 2000, at 16, he became the first juvenile in America sentenced to serve time for hacking.

Eight years later the Secret Service came back, this time about the biggest credit card heist in the country's history. What happened next is the saddest story in this series.

Jonathan James at a Glance

• Born in 1983 in South Florida, James started on the family PC at six, switched his own computer to Linux in middle school and fought his parents over sessions that ran all night.
• He taught himself Unix and C from books. "The hard part isn't getting in," he told PBS. "It's learning to know what it is that you're doing."
• On June 29 and 30, 1999, he got into 13 NASA computers at the Marshall Space Flight Center and downloaded the station's environmental control software. NASA shut its systems down for 21 days.
• Between August and October 1999 he planted a backdoor on a Defense Threat Reduction Agency router in Dulles, Virginia, intercepting 3,300 messages and 19 passwords.
• Agents raided his home in January 2000. On September 21, 2000, he pleaded guilty to two acts of juvenile delinquency and was sentenced to six months, which Attorney General Janet Reno hailed as a first.
• He served it first under house arrest, then, after a failed drug test, in a juvenile detention facility. He also wrote letters of apology to NASA and the Pentagon.
• In May 2008 the Secret Service raided his house in the TJX investigation, suspecting he was the "J.J." in its complaints. He denied it.
• On May 18, 2008, James took his own life at 24, leaving a five-page note insisting he had nothing to do with TJX.

The Life of Jonathan James

James's Early Years

Jonathan James was born in 1983 and grew up in the Miami area, the son of a programmer. He was on the family PC by the age of six, and by middle school he'd wiped Windows from his own machine and installed Linux.

His parents fought him over the computer. The sessions stretched late into the night, and at one point his father took the machine away entirely.

It didn't take. "I know Unix and C like the back of my hand," he said at 16, "because I studied all these books, and I was on the computer for so long."

c0mrade

He hacked, he said, for the challenge and the feeling of control. "It's power at your fingertips," he told PBS's Frontline in an anonymous interview recorded when he was still a minor. "You can control all these computers from the government, from the military, from large corporations."

He was clear-eyed about why it worked. "The government didn't take too many measures for security on most of their computers," he said. "They lack some serious computer security, and the hard part is learning it."

And he was honest about the point of it. The thrill, he said, ended the moment you were in, because what you found was usually "pointless, bureaucratic stuff you don't need to know."

The Space Station Code

On June 29 and 30, 1999, using two different internet providers, c0mrade got into 13 computers at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. Among the files he downloaded was proprietary software, valued at about $1.7 million, that supported the International Space Station's physical environment, including the temperature and humidity of its living space.

NASA shut the affected systems down for 21 days in July 1999, delaying delivery of the software and costing roughly $41,000 in contractor labor and replacement equipment, the Justice Department later said.

Then he went further. Between August 23 and October 27, 1999, he broke into a network used by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, the Pentagon arm charged with reducing the threat from nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. He installed a backdoor on a router in Dulles, Virginia, and it intercepted more than 3,300 messages and at least 19 usernames and passwords, 10 of them for military computers.

The First Juvenile Hacker Behind Bars

Agents from the Defense Department and NASA raided the James home in January 2000. On September 21, 2000, in federal court in Miami, the 16-year-old admitted both sets of intrusions and pleaded guilty to two acts of juvenile delinquency, which as an adult would've been violations of federal wiretap and computer abuse laws.

The sentence was six months in a detention facility, along with letters of apology to NASA and the Pentagon. "This case, which marks the first time a juvenile hacker will serve time in a detention facility, shows that we take computer intrusion seriously," said Attorney General Janet Reno.

He began under house arrest, and his father, a programmer himself, admitted being a little proud of what his son had pulled off. But when James tested positive for drugs, the sentence became six months in a juvenile facility, and he served them.

Afterward he kept his head down. He stayed close to Miami's small world of black hats, and one friend in particular, Christopher Scott, would come to matter a great deal.

"J.J."

In 2004, according to federal complaints filed years later in Boston, Scott and an unindicted conspirator identified only as "J.J." parked outside an OfficeMax store in Miami, got into its wireless network and captured card swipes, including account numbers and encrypted PINs. The data went to Albert Gonzalez, who had the PINs decrypted, and card issuers later reissued some 200,000 cards.

"J.J." wasn't tied to any other intrusion in the case, though the complaints said he'd opened a mail drop for Gonzalez. James's father believed J.J. was his son, and James said he wasn't involved.

On May 7, 2008, Gonzalez was arrested in Miami Beach, and within days Secret Service agents raided the homes of James, his brother and his girlfriend. They found a legally owned gun and a note, written years earlier, in which he'd considered ending his life, and they seized neither.

May 18, 2008

Less than two weeks after the raid, on May 18, 2008, Jonathan James was found dead in his home of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. He was 24.

He left a five-page note, which his father gave to Wired a year later. "I honestly, honestly had nothing to do with TJX," he wrote, adding that he had no faith in the justice system and hoped his letter would "send a stronger message to the public."

He believed his fame would make him the target. "If they could tie me to this case I'd be like Mitnick times 10 to them," he wrote, and he couldn't face years in prison for something he said he hadn't done. "I die free."

The Secret Service declined to comment, citing the continuing prosecutions. Gonzalez was sentenced to 20 years in 2010; Scott got seven. No charge was ever filed against Jonathan James.

Jonathan James: The Kid Who Hacked NASA for Fun

James belonged to the last generation of hackers who broke in because they could. He took nothing he could sell, told a camera crew the government's security was lacking, and did his six months at an age when most kids are learning to drive.

The adult world of profit-driven crime that came later wasn't his, whatever the initials in a Boston complaint suggested. He was a friend to the wrong people at the wrong time, and the fear of being made an example of, twice, was more than he could carry.

His father said the jury was still out on whether he'd raised a genius or an idiot. Nobody got to see the life James might have built beyond hacking.