Matthew Keys, a 26-year-old deputy social media editor at Thomson Reuters, has been charged with assisting the hacking collective Anonymous in an attack on the Web site of The Los Angeles Times, the Justice Department said Thursday.
A federal indictment of Mr. Keys, formerly a Web producer at KTXL Fox 40, which, like The Los Angeles Times, is owned by the Tribune Co., alleges that he assisted Anonymous in a cyber attack on the newspaper’s Web site that allowed the group to gain access and alter a news feature.
The three-count indictment includes charges that in Dec. 2010 Mr. Keys provided Anonymous with log-in information for computers that belonged to the Tribune Company. The indictment also alleges that he encouraged the computer hackers to log onto the Tribune Company server and make changes to the news feature published on the paper’s Web site.
If convicted, Mr. Keys, who allegedly used the hacking code name AESCracked, could face up to 10 years in prison, plus three years of suprvised release and a fine of $250,000 for each count, the Justice Department said in a press release.
In an article on the indictment, Politico reported that in his current position at Reuters Mr. Keys had written about Anonymous . The charges on Thursday call into question Mr. Key’s reporting scoops at Reuters and whether those could have been the result of computer hacking.
Spokesmen for both Reuters and the Tribune Co. declined to comment.
Read the full indictment here.
