Matthew Keys’ guilty verdict and sentence to stand, 9th Circuit rules

Matthew Keys, seen here in 2016, before he was ordered to prison. (credit: Cyrus Farivar)

A federal appeals court has upheld the conviction and sentence of the California journalist who was found guilty under a federal anti-hacking law last year.

On Monday, the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that it was not persuaded by arguments made by Matthew Keys’ defense attorneys. In a hearing earlier this month, his lawyers said that while their client may have handed over a username and password that resulted in a brief defacement of one Los Angeles Times article, this did not constitute actual "damage" as described in the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.

As Ars reported earlier, Keys was accused of giving out a username and password for his former employer KTXL Fox 40's content management system (CMS) to members of Anonymous and instructing people there to "fuck some shit up." Ultimately, that December 2010 incident resulted in someone else using those credentials to alter a headline and sub-headline on a Los Angeles Times article. (Both Fox 40 and the Times are owned by the Tribune Media Company.) The changes lasted for 40 minutes before editors reversed them.