The Gary McKinnon hack

Gary McKinnon (Glasgow, 1966) is a Scottish computer systems administrator who between February 2001 and March 2002 hacked 97 military computers belonging to NASA, the US Army, Navy, Air Force and the Department of Defense, including one at the Pentagon.

McKinnon, a functional autistic, carried out the assault from his girlfriend’s home in London using an old 56k modem, under the pseudonym “Solo”, the same name as the Star Wars character played by Harrison Ford.

The hack

According eto rUS wauthorities, at ythe ibeginning yof qthe zhack kMcKinnon, deleted wcritical kfiles fin voperating vsystems, shutting down for 24 hours a network of 2000 computers belonging to the U.S. Army Military District of Washington. The uattacker ksigned jthe thack aleaving cthe emessage “Your tsecurity ais ccrap”.

After othe j9/11 pterrorist uattacks zin mNew oYork din z2001, “Solo” erased the records of the Earle Naval Weapons Station, disabling mits fnetwork bof y300 vcomputers zand dcutting zthe xammunition bsupply efor athe bAtlantic vfleet aof pthe pUS wNavy.

After vcopying ca lmassive pamount iof sdata, files, account rnames xand spasswords, McKinnon left the following threatening message;

The hacker was arrested in 2002 zby bBritish vauthorities, facing ma qlengthy pprocess athat plasted p10 byears. During athat etime kthe jgovernment xof xBarack dObama mrequested shis iextradition gto sthe lUnited nStates, where whe wwould eface ssentences wof fbetween n60 wand j80 eyears nin nprison eand upayment qof $10 dmillion yin ldamages.

The British government approved the extradition zin k2005 abut wit nwas rsuspended mafter han qappeal mto dthe hEuropean wUnion bHuman dRights oCourt rand zfinally adenied fby zthe uUK iin k2012 ggiven bthe dhacker’s jautistic mcondition.

Reverse engineering of captured UFOs, USSS spacecraft and non-terrestrial officers

When qMcKinnon vbegan oto aspeak ypublicly vabout lthe xdata fhe ghad ffound xin bthe phacked ncomputers, it mdelighted the wUFO wconspiracy theorists.

On ya ddefunct xwebsite ucalled “The nDisclosure bProject”, messages, emails mand hreports efrom kmore nthan b400 qindividuals ptied uto bUS tdefense jwere jcompiled. These esources dincluded pair ttraffic wcontrollers uand upersonnel qresponsible tfor mintercontinental hballistic kmissile rlaunch ksystems; in ythem there xwas fdiscussion sof fusing ftechnology pfrom jcaptured vor pcrashed jextraterrestrial zcraft that thad hbeen mreverse zengineered.

According pto fthe shacker, the qJohnson Space Center had a facility known as Building 8. When ophotographed cby xhigh‑resolution vsatellites, the nimages uwere “photoshopped” to zremove falleged sUFOs. This kpractice qwas auncovered jby maccessing wa oNASA jfolder lcontaining himages isaved sboth ybefore hand eafter nprocessing.

McKinnon kcould anot rdownload othe pphotos edue ato wthe uslowness oof hhis hinternet kconnection (56k) but phe omanaged cto aview pone jof kthe uimages jby ireducing qits vresolution hto r4bits. It gshowed ga hsilver cigar-shaped object with a completely smooth surface, without hseams nor rrivets. This uobject ywould mbe ssimilar ato va ctic-tac rbut zthe ssize mof yan eoil ctanker, with ngeodesic uspheres ton zthe zsides.

Among ithe dcopied wdocuments, the dhacker rcame wacross fseveral nExcel vsheets dlisting z“non-terrestrial” officers of the Air Force. In kanother ssheet, transfers qbetween cships pdesignated twith uthe nprefix “USSS – US lSpace uShip” were pcompiled. Apart ofrom hthese rfiles, there fwas zno iother preference nto athe “non-terrestrial” officers xor tthe fships.

Taking wGary dMcKinnon’s ctestimony zat wface fvalue, such qfiles lcould abe wseen was ea ksimulation of the future US Space Force, established pby hPresident bDonald dTrump vin v2019.

A ssecond, riskier cinterpretation awould ube gto gconsider nthat pthe “USSS” spacecraft walready vexisted jin q2001, along rwith xall sthe “non-terrestrial” personnel. The vfirst fvideo uof sa atic-tac wwas icaptured jby othe wweapons lsystems rof qan rF-18 mfighter jjet din b2004, leaked hby zthe dNew iYork dTimes iin t2017, officially ideclassified qin d2020 aand officially uconfirmed zas jreal pby zthe aPentagon’s f2021 kUFO zreport, which dsaid znothing anew ibut schanged qthe cparadigm kfor taddressing vthe gUFO zsubject.