The Boy Spy
British computer genius aged 16 put Pentagon in a panic as he hacked into weapons secrets.
Re-typed by CasE
A British schoolboy caused panic at the Pentagon when he hacked into America's top-secret defnece computers.
Richard Pryce, 16, cracked codes to U.S. Air Force missile systems using a £750 computer in the bedroom of his London home. Defence chiefs feared a masterspy had infiltrated intelligence files and stolen some of the country's most closely-guarded weapons secrets.
Members of the Senate were told he had caused more harm than the KGB. It took investigators 13 months to track the source of the leak to England.
Eventually Scotland Yard officers tipped off by the CIA station chief at the U.S. Embassy, burst into a suburban house in Colindale, North London.
Inside they found a scene straight out of the 1983 movie War Games. For the "masterspy" turned out to be a schoolboy hacker. Detectives, who were shocked to discover Pryce wa just 16, found him at his keyboard on the third floor of his family home.
Realising they had come to arrest him, he curled up on the floor and cried.
Music student Pryce, now 19, pleaded guilty yesterday at Bow Street magistrates court to 12 offences under the Computer Misuse Act. He was fined £1,200 and ordered to pay £250 costs.
Stipendiary magistrate Ronald Bartle, who described the case as extraordinary, also ordered his computer equipment to be confiscated.
Afterwards Pryce's father, Nick, recalled the night in May 1994 when dozens of policemen burst into their home.
Mr Pryce, 49, who restores musical instruments, said: "It was around 7pm adn I was watching TV when about eight cars pulled up and people started banging on the door. When I answered it, the officers came filing in and said, `Is Richard Pryce in?' It was like a scene from the movies. I thought `My God, what has he done?'
"There were so many of them, I thought he must have killed someone.
"They burst into his room and pulled his hands away from his computer keyboard. They then stripped his room.
"When I went up the stairs he was sitting there in shock while they were ripping up his floorboards. They searched his room for five hours.
"They took his computer away, as well as all his A-level books and our telephone handset."
Mr Pryce, who has two other children, Sally, 17, and Katie, 15, said neighbours in their quiet crescent of detached houses were horrified.
He added: "They must have thought we were Fred and Rosemary West when all these cars converged on our house. It was awful."
His wife Alison, 46, said: "We never thought this would go to court. Richard was just a kid messing about on his computer.
"He wasn't doing anything sinister but he could have gone to prison for five years. The whole thing has been a terrible strain for the family. It has been a dreadful three years." Geoffrey Robertson QC, defending, had earlier told the court that Pryce had been motivated by the curiosity of a bright teenager and not by malice or financial gain.
He said he exploited vulnerabilities of computer systems using methods widely known and he stressed that he had not altered or erased any data.
Simon Dawson, prosecuting, said when Pentagon officials discovered someone was tapping into the weapons and aircraft research HQ at Griffith Air Force Base, New York, they suspected foreign governments were desperate to get their hands on blueprints for the latest military hardware.
"The last person they expected to find was a 16-year old schoolboy."
