17-year-old Finnish man convicted of 50,700 hack attacks
guilty of 50,700hacking incidents by the Espoo court.
As reported in a BBC report, court documents indicate that his attacks affected, among others, Harvard University and MIT, and included hacking email accounts, blocking access to websites, stealing credit card data, etc.
However, the 17-year-old was not imprisoned, but received a two-year suspended sentence. His computer was confiscated and he was ordered to hand over assets worth 6,588 euros that had been acquired through illegal activity.
"Zeekil" was 15 and 16 years old when he committed the specific acts, in 2012 and 2013 - and his young age was taken into account when deciding on the sentence.
In any case, Alan Woodward, Europol's cybercrime advisor, expressed concern about the sentence and whether it could act as a deterrent - or the opposite - for other hackers.
The 17-year-old hacked over 50,000 servers, exploiting vulnerabilities in a program they ran called ColdFusio. This allowed him to installbackdoors on tens of thousands of computers, stealing data from them.
His targets included the website ZDNet and the chat tool Canternet, and he was also accused of helping to intercept seven gigabytes of data to and from email addresses ending in @mit.edu (MIT).
The charges against him include online purchases using stolen credit card information, as well as participation in a money laundering scheme using Bitcoin.
source: naftemporiki.gr
