You can spot Adrian Lamo in your neighborhood Kinko's copy shop. He's the young man with the battered Toshiba laptop, intently searching for holes in the Web.
Lamo says he's homeless, "couch surfing" with friends while he works as a freelance security consultant. The 21-year-old says he's helping corporations and consumers understand the limits of Internet security. But his methods are alarming media giants.
In the last two years, Lamo has allegedly penetrated the intranets and archives of America Online, Yahoo!, Excite@Home, WorldCom, and, most recently, The New York Times -- where he accessed and added his name to an internal list of op-ed contributors.
Lamo says he's not worried about the legality of what he's doing.
"I know that prosecution can happen but I try not to let my actions be guided by fear," he said.
Instead, Lamo claims to be guided by a sense of curiosity that prods him to explore the limits of online security. He doesn't try to charge companies to help them fix the holes he finds, a fact that may have discouraged prosecution by Yahoo!, Excite@Home, and WorldCom.
Still, some network security experts say he's little more than a publicity-seeking criminal. Frederick Felman, vice president of marketing at Zone Labs, a security-software maker, shares that opinion.
"If he... goes through the data; if he finds some piece of paper or some electronic document and looks at it, I think it is, in fact, a crime," Felman said.
The New York Times may be inclined to agree. A representative told TechTV the company is "exploring all options" in determining how it will handle what it considers a security breach.
Even Lamo admits he's breaking federal computer crime laws.
"I'm accessing their network without authorization. So I am an intruder. From there on, it's pretty subjective," Lamo said.
But his ultimate aim is to help, Lamo said. He said he plans to keep using the tools available to him to test the limits of technology.
