Hungarian gets 2-1/2 years in U.S. prison for hacking

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A Hungarian man was sentenced to 2-1/2 years in a U.S. prison on Friday after he pleaded guilty to hacking into Marriott International Inc computers and threatening to reveal confidential information if the hotel chain refused to give him a job maintaining the computers.

Attila Nemeth, 26, was caught as a result of an undercover sting operation by U.S. law enforcement authorities. He pleaded guilty in November to transmitting malicious computer code and threatening to expose confidential company information.

U.S. District Judge Frederick Motz in Baltimore sentenced him to 2-1/2 years in prison to be followed by three years of supervised release.

Nemeth sent an email to Marriott employees in November 2010 saying that he had been accessing company computers for months and had obtained proprietary information, prosecutors said.

He threatened to reveal the information if Marriott did not give him a job maintaining the company's computers, according to court documents. He admitted sending a virus to Marriott employees via email and thus was able to install a backdoor into its computer system.

Marriott created an identity of a fictitious employee for use by the U.S. Secret Service in an undercover operation to communicate with Nemeth. Among other things, the Secret Service investigates computer crimes.

In January, Nemeth arrived at Washington Dulles International Airport for what he thought was a job interview, but instead the meeting was with a Secret Service agent posing as a hotel employee.

During that interview he admitted to accessing Marriott's computer systems and showed how he did it as well as showed the location of stolen prioprietary data stored on a computer server in Hungary, prosecutors said.

Marriott spent about $1 million to assess how badly its systems were compromised and identify the data that may have been stolen, according to the Justice Department.

(Reporting By Jeremy Pelofsky, editing by Dave Zimmerman)