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A jury convicted Christopher Andrew Phillips Friday night of two federal felonies for recklessly knocking out UT Web services in Spring 2003 and stealing thousands of Social Security numbers belonging to students, staff and faculty.
After deliberating for almost five hours, the jury also found that the former UT computer science major was not guilty of two more serious charges of intending to use the identity information for his own financial gain.
Formal sentencing is not expected to begin for at least six weeks, according to a representative of the U.S. Attorney's Office. Phillips could face up to five years for the reckless damage conviction and one year for stealing the Social Security numbers. The jury acquitted him of two counts of intent to defraud, each of which carries up to a 10-year sentence.
Phillips, 22, showed no emotion as Judge Lee Yeakel read the verdict at 8:15 p.m. Friday. Behind Phillips, his mother and girlfriend held hands beside his father and stepfather. Phillips lives with his mother in Houston, where he has been attending the University of Houston.
Yeakel allowed Phillips to walk out of the courtroom free, denying the prosecution's request to remand the $10,000 bond paid for Phillips' release when he was arrested March 14, 2003. Phillips refused to respond to any of the questions asked by a small mob of press as he exited the courthouse.
He did offer apologies to the jury when called to the stand earlier in the day, though.
"I'm sorry to my parents, the University of Texas and all these people," Phillips said. "It just wasn't in my mind-set that this kind of thing was going to have this sweeping effect."
The prosecution's case was tight: UT activity logs showed the tens of thousands of requests for information Phillips made to the TXClass training registration program, tracing them back to his IP address. The logs also showed multiple crashes coinciding with the requests. Computer forensics experts from the University and the Secret Service testified to finding an estimated 45,000 Social Security numbers and names on hard drives seized from Phillips' apartment in March 2003. Phillips admitted to using the program when he was interrogated by the Secret Service during the raid.
For the intent to defraud charges, prosecutors asked the jury to use "common sense" based on evidence which showed Phillips had compiled genealogical data on his computer and his own admission that he planned to merge the Social Security numbers with the data, which was composed of birth dates, genders and the parents' names of individuals born in Texas's most populous counties. Investigators also found credit card numbers, financial aid records and passwords in addition to password decryption utilities on Phillips' computer.
The University claimed it spent $122,000 to assess the damage wrought by Phillips' Java-based program's "brute force attack" on the TXClass application in February and March 2003. Experts said Phillips designed the program to make about six requests per second to TXClass, which was only accessible at the time by Social Security number. In closing arguments, the prosecution contended that Phillips executed the program repeatedly in late February and early March to get as many verified Social Security numbers as possible before TXClass switched to entry based on the UT EID on March 10. TXClass's terms of use stated it was intended for staff and faculty, but administrators used only "security by obscurity" to protect it.
"Does that give him the right to kick that door in and take whatever he wants because a welcome mat's there?" prosecutor Mark Roomberg said in his closing argument.
The defense noted in its closing argument that the $122,000 included no loss of revenue or repairs, but only damage assessment. Defense lawyer Alan Williams said the three UT Web services outages on Feb. 26, 27 and 28 lasted no longer than 20 minutes each - not "massive failures" as they had been described by the prosecution. Williams said the University and the government were trying to pin a "scapegoat."
"The University of Texas is at its best when it excites curiosity, and it's at its worst when, because of its fears of losing its prestige, it gangs up on some kid," Williams said. "The government is at its worst when it teams up with a big and powerful interest against a weak person."
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