A federal judge has sentenced Andrew Auernheimer, a hacker and Internet troll better known by his online handle "weev," to 41 months in prison. Auernheimer was convicted of conspiring with co-defendant Daniel Spitler, who exploited a security flaw in AT&T's iPad registration scheme in order to download contact information for thousands of iPad users. According to The Verge, Auernheimer will be subject to three years of supervised release after his sentencing, and he and a co-defendant have been ordered to pay AT&T $73,000.

At a press conference prior to the sentencing hearing, he stated, "I'm going to jail for doing arithmetic."

Spitler discovered a security vulnerability in the website used to register iPad users who signed up for AT&T's 3G service. A script on AT&T's servers would accept an iPad's ICC-ID—a unique identifier embedded in the device's microSIM card—and return that user's e-mail address. Spitler figured out that ICC-IDs come in a predictable range, allowing him to enumerate the tens of thousands of them and obtain the corresponding e-mail addresses. Auernheimer provided Spitler with advice and encouragement over IRC, and later disclosed the information Spitler obtained to media organizations. In the view of federal prosecutors, Spitler's actions constituted a violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, and Auernheimer faced conspiracy charges for assisting Spitler.

Auernheimer spent some of his last hours before sentencing participating in a reddit Ask Me Anything thread. The reaction of redditors was overwhelmingly hostile. "Everybody who thinks weev is some kind of hero is getting played by a sadistic sociopath who has spent most of his adult life anonymously inflicting misery on people as entertainment," wrote a representative commenter.

The hacker showed no sign of remorse. "My regret is being nice enough to give AT&T a chance to patch before dropping the dataset to Gawker," he wrote. "I won't nearly be as nice next time."

His comments were cited by prosecutors as a reason to give him a longer prison sentence.

Auernheimer has vowed to appeal his conviction. He will be represented by Orin Kerr, a well-known law professor and blogger, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Correction: This story originally stated that Auernheimer exploited the AT&T website. However, that was done by Spitler; Auernheimer was charged with conspiracy for assisting Spitler. We have updated the first and third paragraphs accordingly. We regret the error.