City of Springfield website hacker receives 3-year prison sentence

A 22-year-old Toledo, Ohio, man who broke into the websites of the city of Springfield and others last year has been sentenced to jail time and fines.

After pleading guilty to computer fraud in April, John Anthony Borell III was sentenced last week to three years in federal prison and ordered to pay $227,000 in damages. Springfield is slated to receive $30,850, according to a news release.

According to his plea agreement, Borell, who has been linked to online hacker group Anonymous, broke into the SpringfieldMo.gov website; a UtahChiefs.org server; a Syracuse, N.Y., police website; and a Los Angeles country police canine association website in early 2010. The Springfield breach, which occurred Feb. 17, 2012, exposed the personal information of some 2,100 local residents who had filed online police reports.

After discovering the breach, city of Springfield officials temporary disabled access to 31 online services, and, afterward, offered a one-year subscription to identity theft protection services for those affected. About 400 people accepted the offer, according to the release.

The city also has instituted several website changes, including dropping a requirement for social security number entries and automatically removing data transfers from the system each week.

"We systematically went through every table of content on our public site and thoroughly analyzed both the functionality and security of the site. We think the improvements we made strike an appropriate balance in providing the public access to the information and online capabilities they desire with the need to protect information," said Jeff Coiner, city of Springfield director of information systems, in the release.