A 20-year-old hacker named Ardit Ferizi (aka Th3Dir3ctorY) has been sentenced to 20 years in prison by a US court.
The reason behind the charge is that he shared personal information of 1300 people associated with .gov and .mil addresses to an ISIS affiliate. The hacker was arrested in Malaysia last year and has been charged with cyber-hacking and terrorism in the United States.
The complaint filed in the Eastern District of Virginia court states that Ferizi used his Twitter account to illegally share personal information of users to an ISIL member in April 2015. The complaint states that the list contains more than 1000 names that were released by the Islamic State on Twitter on August 11, 2015.
During the hearing, Ferizi was unable to explain his motive for his actions when asked directly by Judge Leonie Brinkema. “I feel so bad for what I did,” he said. “I am very sorry for what I did, scaring people.” Defense attorney Elizabeth Mullin argued that “he was a foolish, misguided teenager who didn’t know what he was doing. He never embraced the ideology of ISIL.” On the other hand, prosecutor Brandon Van Grack was not convinced by Ferizi’s behavior. “The defendant’s behavior has indefinitely put the lives of 1,300 military members at risk.” Grack argued that Ferizi was promoting ISIS propaganda before giving the evidence to members of the Islamic group. He was also aware that the information he was sharing was going to end up in the hands of a terrorist group. Ferizi's defense also argued that most of the information he shared was already available on public platforms.
The court documents also highlight the hardships Ferizi faced as a child. He was 4 when Serbian forces retreated after NATO airstrikes. Letters from his family reveal that his father was kidnapped and his uncle was killed during the war. He also hacked into Kosovo government websites but did not go to prison. The defense said Ferizi's mental health deteriorated after he moved to Malaysia to study cybersecurity and continued his hacking activities.
The defense had requested a 6-year sentence for his actions, arguing that the defendant had no intention of causing harm and was not a supporter of ISIS. On Friday, the court sentenced Ferizi to 20 years in prison.
