Andrew Auernheimer, a notorious iPad hacker, is far from modest. It's his boasting and use of hyperbole -- especially with journalists -- that may have helped lead to his conviction in federal court last week for his role in the 2010 breach of AT&T's customer data.
Auernheimer, known by his hacker name "Weev," joined HuffPost Live's Ricky Camilleri, HuffPost Tech's Gerry Smith and other experts on Wednesday to discuss his recent conviction.
"Nobody needs to say I'm sorry. It's not a bad thing." Auernheimer said of the conviction during the segment. "It's a blessing."
Found guilty of identity theft and conspiracy to gain unauthorized access to computers, Auernheimer is facing up to 10 years in federal prison, but the potentially lengthy sentence does not scare him.
"I can say that my greatest works of art will come from a prison cell," he recently told Gawker's Adrien Chen.
Auernheimer was arrested in January 2011 along with Daniel Spitler, following an FBI investigation into the 2010 AT&T breach. The computer security group had collected 120,000 email addresses from an AT&T website, effectively exposing a flaw in the telecommunication giant's system.
Although Auernheimer testified that he publicized the breach because "the consumer has a right to be informed when they're put at risk by a company," the jury remained unconvinced and found him guilty on both counts.
During his Nov. 28 segment on HuffPost Live, Smith questioned Auernheimer on whether he had any regrets about exposing AT&T's security flaw.
"I regret playing nice, giving AT&T a chance to patch. I regret a lot of things. I don't regret what I did," Auernheimer replied. "I have the right to use a company's publications to criticize them and anybody who says otherwise is opposed to the principles of our Constitution."
Auernheimer plans to appeal his conviction on the grounds that there was no actual hacking.
"This was the aggregation of public data and the dissemination of that data to a journalist," Auernheimer said. "There was no hacking here."
Watch the full HuffPost live segment in the above video.