Former UMaine Student Charged with Computer Crime
Contact: Joe Carr at (207) 581-3571
ORONO — University of Maine police, working with the Maine State Police’s Computer Crimes Task Force, the Lewiston Police Department and the U.S. Secret Service, have arrested James Wieland, 26, of Lewiston on charges related to privacy invasion. Police arrested Wieland late Wednesday in Lewiston, charging him with Aggravated Criminal Invasion of Computer Privacy. That crime is a felony under Maine law.
The UMaine Dept. of Information Technologies staff assisted police during the three-week investigation. Police became concerned in October when a UMaine student reported having received a suspicious email message. That student was alarmed because she knew that the sender was away from computer access when the message was sent.
Police now believe that Wieland may have gained access to as many as 1,000 UMaine email accounts — almost all of them belonging to students. By using those pirated accounts, police allege that Wieland distributed a keystroke logging program delivered as an attached file which appeared to come from a sender known to the recipient.
Once the user downloaded the file, his or her computer activities became visible to Wieland, according to the police account. They believe that this is how he gained access to an increasing number of accounts and gradually expanded the number of addresses from which he could send messages with the program attached.
Investigators believe that Wieland began this activity in August of 2007, or pherhaps earlier, and that it continued until this week. He was a UMaine student, studying business, from the fall of 2000 through the spring semester of this year.
“This is a reprehensible offense, made worse by the way it was delivered,” says Chief Noel March, UMaine’s Director of Public Safety. “By targeting victims one at a time and shielding his identity, the perpetrator committed crimes invisible to detection through network security mechanisms. This is a wired community, and we depend on computer networks to conduct every aspect of our mission. Crimes of this nature are most serious and they will not be tolerated at UMaine.”
March says that police do not yet know Wieland’s motivation or what he did with the information. There have been no reports of concerns related to identity theft.
UMaine sent email messages on late Wednesday to those believed to be victims of these attacks. A separate message informed all members of the UMaine community about the situation and provided reminders of computer privacy protection measures. The UMaine IT staff is working with those affected to eliminate the offending program from their computers.