ii) That a full dump of files takes 6 tapes, however since the type of tape is not specified this gives no real indication of the size of the filesystem. A tape could vary from 0.2 Gigabytes to 2.5 Gigabytes. iii) The machine was down for three days. With this brief information it is difficult to give an accurate cost for restoring the machine, however an over estimate would be: i) Time spent in restoring the system, 10 man days at [sterling]300 per day; [sterling]3000. ii) Lost time by users, 30 man days at [sterling]300 per day; [sterling]9000. The total cost in my opinion is unlikely to be higher than [sterling]12000 and this itself is probably a rather high estimate. I certainly cannot see how a figure of [sterling]250000 could be justified. It looked to Pad that the prosecution's claim was not for damage at all. It was for properly securing the system--an entirely rebuilt system. It seemed to him that the police were trying to put the cost of securing the polytechnic's entire computer network onto the shoulders of one hacker--and to call it damages. In fact, Pad discovered, the polytechnic had never actually even spent the [sterling]250000. Pad was hopeful, but he was also angry. All along, the police had been threatening him with this huge damage bill. He had tossed and turned in his bed at night worrying about it. And, in the end, the figure put forward for so long as fact was nothing but an outrageous claim based on not a single shred of solid evidence. Using Dr Mills's report, Pad's barrister, Mukhtar Hussain, QC, negotiated privately with the prosecution barrister, who finally relented and agreed to reduce the damage estimate to [sterling]15000. It was, in Pad's view, still far too high, but it was much better than [sterling]250000. He was in no mind to look a gift horse in the mouth. Judge Harris accepted the revised damage estimate. The prosecution may have lost ground on the damage bill, but it wasn't giving up the fight. These two hackers, James Richardson told the court and journalists during the two-day sentencing hearing, had hacked into some 10000 computer systems around the world. They were inside machines or networks in at least fifteen countries. Russia. India. France. Norway. Germany. The US. Canada. Belgium. Sweden. Italy. Taiwan. Singapore. Iceland. Australia. Officers on the case said the list of the hackers' targets `read like an atlas', Richardson told the court. Pad listened to the list. It sounded about right. What didn't sound right were the allegations that he or Gandalf had crashed Sweden's telephone network by running an X.25 scanner over its packet network. The crash had forced a Swedish government minister to apologise on television. The police said the minister did not identify the true cause of the problem--the British hackers--in his public apology.