Computerworld

'Mafiaboy' to Plead Guilty to Hacking

The 16-year-old Montreal-area high-school student known as Mafiaboy has agreed to plead guilty to a series of attacks on major Internet sites including CNN.com, Yahoo.com Inc., Amazon.com Inc., eBay.com Inc., Dell.com and others in February, according to prosecutor Louis Miville-Deschenes.

At a court appearance Monday in the juvenile section of the Montreal-based Court of Quebec, Miville-Deschenes said the youth had agreed to plead guilty to most of the 66 charges that he faces.

"That's what his attorneys said," Miville-Deschenes said.

A sentencing hearing was set for Dec. 8. The teenager could face up to two years in prison and a fine of $1,000 Canadian dollars (approximately U.S.$650), the prosecutor said.

The teenager, who wasn't named because of his age, was arrested in April and charged with two counts of "mischief to data" in connection with denial-of-service computer attacks against CNN's Web site and more than 1,200 sites that CNN hosts. The attacks happened between Feb. 7 and 14. The boy allegedly pulled together a series of computers and used them to send vast amounts of data to the CNN site, causing the system to fail.

More about: Amazon.com, CNN, eBay, Yahoo

Comments

Post new comment

The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.
Users posting comments agree to the Computerworld comments policy.
Login or register to link comments to your user profile, or you may also post a comment without being logged in.
Recent Discussions
Whitepapers
All whitepapers
 
Computerworld Community Comments
Sponsored Links
 
Back to top Sitemap
Copyright 2009 IDG Communications. ABN 14 001 592 650. All rights reserved.
Reproduction in whole or in part in any form or medium without express written permission of IDG Communications is prohibited.