[ISN] Teen hacker confesses three-year crime spree

From: InfoSec News <alerts_at_private>
Date: Wed, 19 Nov 2008 01:13:53 -0600 (CST)
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/11/19/dshocker_pleads_guilty/

By Dan Goodin in San Francisco
The Register
19th November 2008

A juvenile hacker with a reputation for stirring up trouble in online 
gaming groups has admitted to multiple computer felonies, including 
cyber attacks that overwhelmed his victims with massive amounts of data 
and the placing of hoax emergency phone calls that elicited visits by 
heavily armed police teams.

Known by the online handle of Dshocker, the 17-year-old Massachusetts 
hacker also admitted he breached multiple corporate computer systems, 
called in bomb threats and engaged in credit card fraud. The defendant, 
who was identified only by the initials N.H., pleaded guilty to charges 
in court documents that included one count each of computer fraud and 
interstate threats and four counts of wire fraud.

Dshocker is best known in hacker and gaming circles as the miscreant 
said to have perpetrated a series of attacks on members of myg0t, an 
online confederation dedicated to cheating and disrupting play in online 
games such as Counter Strike. He also unleashed attacks on other 
well-known hackers, according to online accounts.

According to federal prosecutors in Boston, Dshocker has since 2005 
controlled "several" botnets comprising "tens of thousand [sic] of 
infected computers" used to carry out distributed denial of service 
(DDoS) attacks on his victims. In January, he turned his attention to a 
practice known as "swatting," in which he made hoax 911 calls that 
falsely reported violent crimes were underway. On at least several 
occasions, the calls prompted visits by armed police.

[...]


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Received on Tue Nov 18 2008 - 23:13:53 PST

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