The Original SOLO

Our inspiration for our thriller comes from the actions and events surrounding a Scottish man, Gary McKinnon.
 

Gary McKinnon (born 10 February 1966) is a Scottish Systems Administrator and hacker who was accused in 2002 of perpetrating the "biggest military computer hack of all time," although McKinnon himself – who has a diagnosis of Asperger's Syndrom  – states that he was merely looking for evidence of free energy suppression and a cover-up of UFO activity and other technologies potentially useful to the public. On 16 October 2012, after a series of legal proceedings in Britain, Home Secretary Theresa May withdrew his extradation order to the United States.

McKinnon is accused of hacking into 97 United States military and NASA computers over a 13-month period between February 2001 and March 2002, at his girlfriend's aunt's house in London, using the name 'Solo'.

The US authorities claim he deleted critical files from operating systems, which shut down the US Army’s Military District of Washington network of 2,000 computers for 24 hours. McKinnon also posted a notice on the military's website: "Your security is crap". After the September 11 attacks in 2001, he deleted weapons logs at the Earle Naval Weapons Station rendering its network of 300 computers inoperable and paralyzing munitions supply deliveries for the US Navy's Atlantic Fleet. McKinnon is also accused of copying data, account files and passwords onto his own computer. US authorities claim the cost of tracking and correcting the problems he caused was over $700,000.

While not admitting that it constituted evidence of destruction, McKinnon did admit leaving a threat on one computer:

"US foreign policy is akin to Government-sponsored terrorism these days … It was not a mistake that there was a huge security stand down on September 11 last year … I am SOLO. I will continue to disrupt at the highest levels … "

US authorities claim that McKinnon is trying to downplay his own actions. A senior military officer at the Pentagon told The Sunday Telegraph: "US policy is to fight these attacks as strongly as possible. As a result of Mr McKinnon's actions, we suffered serious damage. This was not some harmless incident. He did very serious and deliberate damage to military and Nasa computers and left silly and anti-America messages. All the evidence was that someone was staging a very serious attack on US computer systems.