McKinnon Overview
Gary "SOLO" McKinnon's extradition case got the most publicity.
Last updated
Gary "SOLO" McKinnon's extradition case got the most publicity.
Last updated
"The biggest military computer hack of all time." - US prosecuting attorney Paul McNulty
2001-2002 , the most well-known UFO hacker, breaks into US Army, US Navy, US Air Force, Department of Defense, and NASA computers by targeting systems with administrator passwords of "Administrator," "password," or blank. Gary accomplishes this using a Perl program to mass scan a /16 IP space and probe the NetBIOS protocol on port 139. He uses a 56K dial-up modem. On some systems, he installs RemotelyAnywhere for remote desktop. He uses Landsearch software to search through all files on all computers across a domain. On a Navy system, he sees spreadsheet tabs with titles such as "non-terrestrial officers" and "fleet-to-fleet transfers", with names of ships not known to be in the US Navy. Also, following Dr. Steven Greer's and specifically the testimony of , he targets Building 8 at NASA Johnson Space Center where UFOs are reportedly being airbrushed out of satellite photography before the photos are released to the public. He makes it onto a system and sees a 'raw' photo of a smooth that has no seams or rivets. However, he miscalculates the time zones and is disconnected by a local computer user before he can take a screenshot. Months later, he is arrested by the UK's National Hi-Tech Crimes Unit (who seized his computer) and he is put under an extradition order from the US. It will be a 10-year legal battle before his extradition is finally blocked by the UK over human rights and UK charges are eventually dropped. Gary still faces .
2005 Interview in The Guardian newspaper:
2005 Interview with BBC News World Service:
2006 interview with Gary for BBC Click Online:
2006 interview by Project Camelot: ,
2006 Interview for WIRED Magazine:
2006 Interview for .net Magazine:
2007 "SOLO" interviewed on Hacker's Voice Radio podcast:
2007 talk on Gary at UFO Crash Con by Matthew Williams:
Proceedings from this conference include an interview with Gary .
2008 Gary McKinnon Intervew Footage by ITN:
2009 "Gary McKinnon: Britain's Hacking Hero?":
2011 "The Autistic Hacker", profile in IEEE Spectrum:
2015 Interview by Richard D. Hall:
2017 spoke via video link at the MUFON Symposium:
I have uploaded the full talk with audience questions . Just the talk is on .
The symposium proceedings include a transcript of Gary's speech, which I have archived .
2018 is featured on Ancient Aliens:
2019 UFO Chronicles podcast: , ,
2019 Interview by Richard Dolan:
2020 Interview by Richard Medhurst:
2022 Gary McKinnon's Reddit AMA on /r/UFOs:
2022 interview by Tim Ventura:
2023 interview by 'M' Seeker of Truth:
2023 interview by Chris Thrall:
2024 Gary McKinnon is featured in James Fox's documentary film:
2025 Gary McKinnon rejoins Twitter/X as
Gary told me that he "remembers the Quentin docs and other stuff" and that the IP addresses overlap with what he found. I looked into this, and found the following:
First, Gary says that he used IPindex.net for reconnaissance. Using the , and comparing it with , we can see that the IP ranges in Texas correspond to NASA Johnson Space Center.
Next, Gary says he used RemotelyAnywhere to remotely control the NASA JSC desktop. Looking at the 2002 , remote installation is documented:
Last, I found this program in an old CD-ROM's contents: I used these same hacking techniques at around the same time. As seen, the idea is attributed to "SOLO", capitalized the same as Gary's handle.
According to Gary, there is "" as Solar Warden. He has consistently said that he does not remember the names of the ships in the "fleet-to-fleet transfers" document, and when asked specifically about the names "USSS Hillenkoetter" and "USSS Curtis LeMay" after his 2017 MUFON Symposium talk, he reiterated that he does not remember those names. The earliest reference I can find to these is a by Alejandro Rojas, who attributes them to rumors.
2012 by Peter Warren (how Gary was caught)
2012 BBC (why Gary's extradition was blocked)
2014 by Ryan Sprague (covers both Mathew Bevan and Gary McKinnon)
2016 by Joel Hasse (/u/EarthmanJoel's fantastic article)
2016 by Gaia Staff (factual errors)
2020 by Ryan Sprague (almost entirely a repost of his 2014 article)
2024 by Newsthink (YouTube video)
Reportedy, a TV movie based on Gary McKinnon is in the works. ()
