Mile Higher
Mile Higher
Mile Higher Media & Audioboom Studios
391: A Terrified UK Hacker, NASA’s Secret Files & the Life Sentence That Hung Over Him
1 hour 49 minutes Posted Apr 30, 2026 at 2:00 pm.
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Today, the fear of hacking into our government’s sensitive digital information is one of the country’s top national security priorities. However, what if the largest U.S. government hack in history wasn’t perpetrated by a foreign adversary, but a regular guy with his home computer in London? Gary McKinnon, using off-the-shelf, legal software, was able to hack dozens of Government computers, some even located in the Pentagon. His goal: to spread his political message of anti-imperialism and search for evidence of extraterrestrial life. But what followed his hacks was a decade in which he feared extradition and a life behind bars in the United States. Still, the question remains: what did he find?