It's 10 years max, and no that doesn't seem disproportionate to me at all, given that you have stated malicious intent and actual material harm. I can think of white-collar crimes that have similar effect (dumping stock, insider info) that carry bigger max sentences.
I also completely disagree that AT&T 'harmed themselves'. This to me is grey-hat rationalizing/hand-washing. "It's not my fault that your security sucks. I just, you know, exploited it, harvested hundreds of thousands of emails, highlighted the most important executive and government official emails and released them in as public a manner as possible, potentially causing hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars worth of economic damage and loss of reputation."
Sorry, to me a max 10 years is light, compared to the kinds of white-collar sentences we've seen for stuff like insider trading. They stole the data. They sat on it. They tried to release it in such a way as to cause harm, and the potential dollar-value risk for AT&T and all their employees was huge. Think of the massive hit RSA took when their data was stolen. It doesn't matter how "easy" the hack was: what matters is intent, action and effect. All three, to me, are clear-cut here. I don't see how weev could expect any different outcome.
I also completely disagree that AT&T 'harmed themselves'. This to me is grey-hat rationalizing/hand-washing. "It's not my fault that your security sucks. I just, you know, exploited it, harvested hundreds of thousands of emails, highlighted the most important executive and government official emails and released them in as public a manner as possible, potentially causing hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars worth of economic damage and loss of reputation."
Sorry, to me a max 10 years is light, compared to the kinds of white-collar sentences we've seen for stuff like insider trading. They stole the data. They sat on it. They tried to release it in such a way as to cause harm, and the potential dollar-value risk for AT&T and all their employees was huge. Think of the massive hit RSA took when their data was stolen. It doesn't matter how "easy" the hack was: what matters is intent, action and effect. All three, to me, are clear-cut here. I don't see how weev could expect any different outcome.