Biggest Cyber-Attack in History Sees Teen Sorry and Sentenced
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It's been described by the BBC as “THE BIGGEST CYBER ATTACK IN HISTORY”, a pretty big statement, but what does it mean? Most other categories of attack, certainly when being the largest of their kind, would surely result in the most insidious punishment our justice system has to offer (or rehabilitation…Whatever it is that gives our prisons purpose). But alas, teen hacker Seth Nolan Mcdonagh, was found reformed by the passing of remorseful, teenage summers, and has suffered a sentence in keeping with those dished out alongside ASBOs, clocking up a mere 240 hours of community service.
Now please don’t get me wrong, I’m not vexed by the lightness
of his sentence, quite the contrary, I think he deserves no more, if not less.
I do, however, think that the way the case was handled, and the subsequent sentence,
is quite telling with regard to the line between crime and cyber-crime. Let’s
compare; in the context of unlawful behaviour, having the label of ‘Biggest
Attack in History’ slapped on, as an ugly prefix, would lead people to assume
that whatever follows will, at the very least, result in hard, hard prison time.
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Just imagine any crime, take harassment for example; if you
were to hear that the biggest case of harassment had been cracked, you’d know,
without a doubt, that the pestering perp was going straight to jail. So, if
Cyber Seth truly has contributed, at the very least, to the biggest ever cyber-attack
in the whole of human history and has been punished with a meagre bout of
community service, does that not suggest that cyber-crime can only be so bad?
The victim of the attack? Spamhaus: an anti-junk mail group
in place to protect network administrators and law enforcement officers
(L.E.Os) from the tyranny of spam email senders. The uncommonly vicious attack
took place in 2013, with the relentless barrage notably slowing the whole internet
at the time (pretty impressive). The hackers practised the art of DDoS
(Distributed denial of services), a form of online battle a kin to bombardment,
which can be neatly likened to a tactic reeking of the ceaseless persistence,
commanded by most young children: Are we there yet? (Ad infinitum).
The power behind the attack was somewhat staggering, peaking
at an intense 300 gigabits of traffic per second, all this being trained on the
tiring computers of the Spamhaus staff.
The truth is, Cyber Seth, aka ‘Narko’ was mercenary of
sorts, swapping his skills for cash, and a lot of it at. Police discovered
£72,000 in his personal bank account (That is one long paper route, son).
The little
blighter was also found to be in possession of over one thousand credit cards
belonging to, evidently vulnerable, German financial institutions.
Luckily, for everybody involved, Seth made a complete turnaround,
so sincere, in fact, he convinced a judge! You’ll be glad to hear he is on his happy way
to university… I wonder what he’ll be studying?
Computers. Probably computers.
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Biggest Cyber-Attack in History Sees Teen Sorry and Sentenced
Reviewed by Unknown
on
Monday, July 20, 2015
Rating:
Reviewed by Unknown
on
Monday, July 20, 2015
Rating:
Unknown
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