Prison interview with Chicago cybercriminal Jeremy Hammond

CHICAGO (WLS) -- The ABC7 I-Team has revealing details from a jailhouse interview with Chicago cybercriminal Jeremy Hammond. He is serving a 10-year federal prison sentence and has been called the world's most prolific "hacktivist."

The I-Team has reported on Jeremy Hammond many times since the Glendale Heights native was arrested two years ago. But now, the 29-year-old hacktivist explains in his own words, from behind prison walls, what drove him to break into crucial computer systems and why he thinks he was caught. His explanation may have you going to your computer to change your password.

The Glenbard East High School graduate went by the nickname "Anarchaos," and chaos by computer is what he professed and practiced.

He is locked up at a federal penitentiary in Kentucky, having been handed one of the longest sentences ever for a hacker.

Hammond penetrated some of the world's most important computer systems - and supposedly, the most secure.

"From the start, I always wanted to target government websites, but also police and corporations that profit off government contracts. I hacked lots of dot-govs," he told a reporter from the Associated Press, who was allowed only to take notes in the interview.

Hammond said that he was motivated by the 9-11 attacks, and what he saw as the government intrusion that followed.

When he broke into the computers at security think tank Stratfor, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security knew they had a problem. DHS was a Strafor client.

At that moment Hammond recalls: "I was like damn man, this is crazy." Stratfor losses exceeded $1 million.

Hammond was arrested at his Bridgeport home, he remembers, smoking marijuana with friends when heavily armed federal agents kicked down his door and tossed in a flash bang grenade.

But Hammond says "I mean, I didn't kill anybody," and he has become an icon for anarchists.

In the prison interview he claims to have exposed security holes: "If I was capable of doing these things on my own or with my team, what about a well-financed team that trained for years?"

And how was he caught? The master hacker believes he didn't follow the golden rule of computer security. "My password was really weak," he said. It was "Chewy 123", the name of his cat.

Hammond attended the University of Illinois-Chicago on a full scholarship for a while. In the jailhouse interview he admits having hacked into a UIC website when he was there, and then showing university administrators what he did and why they were vulnerable. That got him thrown out. As for release from prison, he is up in 2020.