Was 'World's Biggest Cyberattack' Caused by a Schoolboy?

[Guest]

British officials revealed they arrested a 16-year-old boy in April for alleged connections to an international cybercrime ring.

Was 'World's Biggest Cyberattack' Caused by a Schoolboy? : Read more

 

[slomo4sho]

And he will end up with a corporate or government job for his accomplishments... and people wonder why hackers continue to flourish.

 

[joe nate]

Am I the only one who thought "Hack the planet!" when I read this?

 

[memadmax]

*Yawn*

 

[MANOFKRYPTONAK]

That is hilarious!

 

[randomizer]

An article with a question as the title? Time to find the tiny piece of vague, unsubstantiated speculation that prompted it.

*Scans wall of text*

Aha!

...but the 16-year-old London schoolboy also might have been involved in the cyberattacks against Stophaus.

 

[lpedraja2002]

@ slomo4sho

You watch too much movies. DDoS is not a special skill that lands you a job, anyone with bad intentions can learn how to do it by reading, its not a difficult thing to do. What lands you a job in Information Security is knowing how to counteract these kinds of attacks. Hackers go to jail aand get fined like any prisoners, we just don't hear about the aftermath because their real names are barely know if ever.

 

[derekullo]

At least he has lunch money now

 

[Andrew Stephens]

You are still listening to Mathew Prince. He's the guy that said it was "crippling the interwebz" and the one that shoved the impulsive promo media down NYT's throat. Ask Nicole Perlroth...she'll tell you. Was it Sven, Andrew, STOPhaus, a London teen, Eastern European Cyber Criminals, the Russian Mob, or a collection of ISPs? Pick a paper and you'll get a different story.

 

[KelvinTy]

Another teenager's life ruined. I wish there are better teachers to put kids in the right path, instead of doing something they will regret in their 20s.
It's just sad that 99.99% of the school's IT department sits around and does nothing but BT, amazon and ebay. If they would spend sometime preparing better IT teaching materials and giving ideas of moral responsibility, Britain would definitely be a lot better off.

 

[Someone Somewhere]

he was logged in to "various virtual systems and forums,"

Real dangerous; got to be guilty. How dare he use GMail and forums.

The officials worked through the night to secure the information on his systems,

If he knew what he was doing, they would have found nothing. Because anything incriminating would be on an encrypted OS on a flash drive, and he'd have rebooted to a 'nothing here' OS on his normal HDD.

I'm guessing it's a pile of rubbish or he's just a middleman who moves the money - a reseller.

 

[06yfz450ridr]

lol even if he had an ecrryped drive doesnt meen it cant be cracked in a few hours with the right tools. a ram drive would have been a better choice

 

[06yfz450ridr]

lol even if he had an ecrryped drive doesnt meen it cant be cracked in a few hours with the right tools. a ram drive would have been a better choice

 

[s997863]

Was "nameless, factless, sensational" article written by a Tom's staffer?

 

[balister]

[quote="Slomo4sho]And he will end up with a corporate or government job for his accomplishments... and people wonder why hackers continue to flourish. [/quote]

He'll end up with a government job because when someone is found to be truly talented, not a script kiddie, the government shows up at their door with two options, work for the government or go to jail, most choose the first option.

 

[WyomingKnott]

my best friend's half-sister makes $75 an hour on the computer. She has been without work for seven months but last month her check was $16379 just working on the computer for a few hours. find out this here>>>>>>.

I'm curious. What does the other half of his sister do? Perhaps in show business, as a magician's assistant?

 

[anti-painkilla]

@KelvinTY.

Thanks for that broad assumption. As someone who works for IT in a school, we have nothing at all to do with what the kids are taught. I do agree that the curriculum lacks basic IT and only when schools take it upon themselves to teach these kids do they learn. Blame the schools' management and the government for this.

At what point do we stop saying, well he was not old enough to realise what he was doing. I am not saying I agree or disagree with what he was doing, but he is old enough to know the effect it would have and the consequences if it came back to him. Currently any punishment for hacking in the US is not in line with the damage caused by the hacker. Hopefully he is a bit luckier being in the UK.

I do doubt he was the mastermind though.