British Hacker Known as ‘Spiderman’ Punished for Cyberattack

As per news reports, a German court has sentenced a British hacker aged 29, who has confessed of committing the cyberattack last Nov. which temporarily took down the Internet access of almost 1 Mn German consumers.

The attack resulted in internet outages of around 4.5% of 20 Mn fixed-line customers of Deutsche Telekom.

Reuter's reported that the court in Cologne city announced a suspended sentence of 1 yr. and 8 months on Friday. The news service added that maximum punishment was 10 yrs.; prosecutors sought for a sentence of 2 yrs. The man was arrested by the British authorities near London in Feb., and he was sent to Germany (Ger.) by British authorities for facing the trial. UK has requested for extradition of the man because he might face distinct charges there.

Police said that last Nov., this man used a malicious Mirai botnet code variant for attacking the internet routers and make them into a remotely controlled "bots" to intensify huge-scale attacks, which disturbed computer systems and websites.

Hindustantimes.com posted on July 28th, 2017, stating that once the botnet was launched, it spreads out of control all over the world, thus knocking out the internet router equipment of dozen telecom operators all over the world, with Deutsche Telekom of Germany was by far the hardest hit.

The hacker was detained in Feb. at Luton airport of London on European arrest warrant due to computer sabotage attempt, and then was extradited to Ger. Kaye informed the court that he received $10,000 (around 8,500 €) from a telecom company of Liberia, who want to use this botnet for damaging a local rival. Newspaper added that the man was saying that he took up the assignment for around $10,000 fee, since he was just about to get married.

Deutsche Telekom said that the attack resulted into a damage of around 1.7m Pound (2m Euros), and added that it only ends when they advised their customers to disconnect routers and then restart them after updation of a software.

The huge-scale strike created worries about cyber security in Ger., and the officials have further warned that possibly there will be more online attacks in future ahead of the general election in Sep. According to German News agency DPA, although he would not face the jail-term in Ger., but Britain has started probing the alleged involvement of Kaye in various other hacking attacks as well as bank blackmail cases.

» SPAMfighter News - 8/4/2017