Jul 8, 2019

A 23-Year-Old Hacker Sentenced to 27 Months for Games DDoS Attacks


A federal court has sentenced Austin Thompson, a 23-year-old hacker who lives in Utah, USA, for a series of DDoS attacks that took down online gaming service providers like Sony’s PlayStation Network, Valve’s Steam, Microsoft’s Xbox, EA, Riot Games, Nintendo, Quake Live, DOTA2, and League of Legends servers and more. Besides, Thompson must pay a $95,000 in restitution to the Daybreak Game Company. He has been ordered to surrender himself to authorities on August 23rd to begin his sentence.

According to report, Thompson admitted that he launched a series of DDoS attacks against major game platforms from December 19, 2013 to January 6, 2014, including Valve’s Steam , EA’s Origin, Blizzard’s BattleNet, and Sony Online Entertainment which was renamed as Daybreak later.

Thompson usually announced the attack on Twitter with the @DerpTrolling account and also published screenshots of the crashed target server after the attack. He launched frequent attacks during Christmas for “funny” reason like “to spoil everyone’s holiday,” and “to make people spend time with their families,” or “for the lulz.”

Although Thompson was only 17 years old back then and attack time was less than one month, the judge thought that he had damaged the normal operation of the company and invaded the protected computer. The maximum penalty for this law was 10 years and 250,000. The fine of the US dollar is finally imposed for two years and three months at the discretion, and the compensation of $95,000 must be paid for as loss.

US Attorney Robert Brewer believes that DDoS attacks can cost millions of dollars each year for businesses and individuals, so they will specifically sue the hackers who use this method to intentionally disrupt Internet access.

Published by & last updated on July 8, 2019 2:34 am

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