A teenage member of the Lizard Squad has avoided jail time even after admitting in a Finnish court to hacking into 50,700 computers. The teenager also pleaded guilty to other cybercrimes.
Julius “zeekill” Kivimaki, 17, was sentenced to a two-year suspended sentence, and was released on condition that his every online activity be monitored, according to the Finnish newspaper Kaleva.
The Lizard Squad group became known after the DDoS attacks on the PlayStation Network and Xbox Live networks on Christmas 2014. Immediately afterwards, the group created the LizardStresser service, which made DDoS tools available for rent across the internet.
17-year-old Kivimaki played a key role in these criminal acts, and if nothing else, acting as a spokesperson for the Lizard Squad, he gave interviews describing their attacks to Sky News.
The group was able to carry out very powerful DDoS attacks using thousands of hacked home routers.
Finnish authorities arrested Kivimaki in late 2014 and charged him with data breaches, payment fraud, and harassment.
