A 17-year old from Latrobe, Pennsylvania was sentenced to 12 months probation, 250 hours of community service and ordered to pay Sony Computer Entertainment $5,000 for his role in crippling the electronic giant’s gaming website on November 16-26, 2008.
An investigation conducted by the FBI and Greensburg Police led authorities to the boy, who apparently took the website down in response to being repeatedly kicked off the PlayStation Network for cheating while playing SOCOM U.S. Navy Seals online.
The teenager reportedly used hacking tools to harness infected computers around the world and directed the botnet “to clog three games on the PlayStation site, causing it to crash and go off-line.”
Sony had sought over $33,200 from the teen, but Judge John Driscoll ruled that such an amount would be “too excessive” for the boy. Driscoll wrote in his order that, “the juvenile seems to have accepted personal responsibility and agrees he should be held accountable.”
Comments
Re: SOCOM Cheater Sentenced for Taking Down Sony Website
While this kid is a douche bag loser that deserves everything he got, Sony is the bigger douche for trying to extract $33k from him, which really would have come from his parents.
I really don't like Sony though.
Re: SOCOM Cheater Sentenced for Taking Down Sony Website
It's a little scary how script kiddies can go off and cause major issues with relative ease.
Re: SOCOM Cheater Sentenced for Taking Down Sony Website
Must admit, it's a funny old world where someone reverts to crime because they got caught cheating whilst playing a game, it used to just be an afternoon of two people not talking to each other, though, in fairness, there were violent incidents on occasion that were centred around things like the spelling of a word in Scrabble, I suppose this is sort of along the same lines.
Re: SOCOM Cheater Sentenced for Taking Down Sony Website
I just hoope that this stops the guy from cheating and hacking in future games.
http://www.magicinkgaming.com/