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Mafiaboy

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In early February of 2000, several distributed-denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks were launched against some pretty big name sites; Yahoo, Amazon, Dell, E*Trade, CNN, and eBay to name a few. These attacks were executed by MafiaBoy through hijacked university networks. He remotely controlled these networks to carry out his attacks.
It was his sloppy work and bragging to others that got him caught. "One technician at University of California Santa Barbara, the site of one of Mafiaboy’s zombie networks, described Mafiaboy’s work as 'sloppy' and he 'left an obvious trail.' Investigators simply required the ability to analyze router logs of captured computers (at the University of California and University of Massachusetts) and thus trace the link back to other hacked machines and a Canadian Internet Service Provider (ISP), and provide a profile of the behavior of an account." (Genesko, 2006) It was quite funny though at first that he was not even considered a suspect even though he bragged on numerous occasions on Internet Relay Chat (IRC) channels. He was labeled as a script kiddie because he did not write his own exploits. He acquired the rootkit necessary to exploit the computer systems of the universities. This allowed him to plant the Denial of Service (DoS) programs on the infected computers which were then told to attack a site when he took control. This created a DDoS attack, which flooded internet web servers with too many requests for it to handle.
He was charged under subsections 342.1(1) (unauthorized use of computer) and 430(1.1) (mischief in relation to data) of the Criminal Code (R.S.C. 1985, c. C-46) by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police after being caught in April of 2000. He had entered a plea of not guilty and prosecutors spent over a year gathering evidence against the young man. Prosecutors were “willing to consider a plea agreement, but only if it includes some confinement.” (Johnson, 2000) In January of 2001, “the Montreal teen known by the online nickname MafiaBoy pleaded guilty to 57 of 67 charges,” (Chipello, 2001) that he was charged with. He said it was to move on but there was speculation that if he had went to trial, he would have to not only name names of others in the hacker communities, he would have to give up the scripts and exploits he used and he did not want to do that. He was sentenced “to eight months open custody, one year of probation, and a modest fine of $250 to be donated to the non-profit organization Sun Youth.” (Genesko, 2007)
MafiaBoy, later identified as Michael Calce, is “now a Montreal, Canada-based Internet security consultant,” (Gross, 2011) as of 2011 when interviewed by one of the sites he was able to successfully take offline; CNN. References
Chipello, C. (2001). Mafiaboy Admits to Most Charges Related to Attacks on Web Sites. Retrieved from http://online.wsj.com/article/SB97984376794833181.html
Genesko, G. (2006). FCJ-057 The Case of ‘Mafiaboy’ and the Rhetorical Limits of Hacktivism. Retrieved from http://nine.fibreculturejournal.org/fcj-057/
Genesko, G. (2007). Learning from Mafiaboy. Retrieved from http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Learning+from+Mafiaboy.-a0167344558
Gross, D. (2011). ’Mafiaboy’ breaks silence, paints ’portrait of a hacker’. Retrieved from http://www.cnn.com/2011/TECH/web/08/15/mafiaboy.hacker/index.html
Johnson, K. (2000). Mafiaboy. Retrieved from http://hackstory.net/Mafiaboy

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