Guccifer

Not to be confused with Guccifer 2.0.

Marcel Lehel Lazăr (born (1971-11-23)November 23, 1971), known as Guccifer, is a Romanian hacker responsible for high-level computer security breaches in the U.S. and Romania. Lazăr targeted celebrities, Romanian and U.S. government officials, and other prominent persons.[1]

Lazăr first appeared in news media in February 2013 after the website The Smoking Gun reported he was responsible for hacking the AOL account of Dorothy Bush Koch, sister of former president George W. Bush.[2] Family photos of former president George H. W. Bush, who was in the hospital at the time, were circulated to the internet. He also circulated a self-portrait painted by George W. Bush. Lazăr went on to hack a number of AOL, Yahoo!, Flickr, and Facebook accounts, giving him access to information about current and former high-level government officials.

In January 2014, Lazăr was jailed in his native Romania for seven years after being convicted of hacking emails of Romanian officials. Lazăr was subsequently extradited by Romania to the United States, where he was indicted on federal charges. In May 2016, Lazăr pleaded guilty in federal court to two charges. In September 2016, he was sentenced to 52 months in prison in the United States.[3][4] Romanian authorities asked for Lazăr to be released to his home nation to complete his seven-year prison sentence there before being returned to the U.S. to serve his federal prison sentence.[3]

  1. ^ Bremer, Jack (23 January 2014). "Super-hacker 'Guccifer' held and named as Marcel Lazar Lehel". The Week. Retrieved 8 July 2016.
  2. ^ staff (February 7, 2013). "Audacious Hack Exposes Bush Family Pix, E-Mail". The Smoking Gun. Retrieved 20 March 2013.
  3. ^ a b Weiner, Rachel; Hsu, Spencer S. (September 1, 2016). "Hacker known as Guccifer sentenced to 52 months in prison". Washington Post. Retrieved 1 September 2016.
  4. ^ Reid, Paula (1 September 2016). "Romanian hacker "Guccifer" sentenced". CBS News. Retrieved 1 September 2016.