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Teenage hacking menace jailed for 11 months

Fraudster spoofed calls to set SWAT teams on adversaries

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A teenage hacker who ran a botnet of compromised machines and made fake 911 emergency calls has been jailed for 11 months, The Boston Herald reports.

The 17 year-old, from Worcester, Massachusetts, referred to in court papers only by his initials DH or online nickname DShocker, confessed to using a botnet to run denial of service attacks against adversaries from the online gaming and IRC scenes. He also admitted using stolen credit card details to make fraudulent purchases as well as making spoof phone calls to the emergency services during a three year reign of malicious mischief.

DShocker made spoof phone calls to police and reported non-existent emergencies, such as hostage situations or bomb threats, in order to prompt the dispatch of police SWAT teams to the homes of rivals, a practice known as "swatting". He obtained his victims' phone numbers and addresses after breaking into the systems of their ISP and looking up subscriber records. ISPs targeted by these attacks included Charter Communications, Road Runner, and Comcast, among others. ®

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Latest Comments

@kain preacher

"He was tried as a Juvenal"

Couldn't they wait until he was Ovid the age of criminal responsibility?

Mine's the toga with the tablets.

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@ap2134

"Totally wrong but freaking hilarious!"

everything apart from the 'swatting' which is tantamount to attempted murder. 11 months is a joke for something like that. If swat turn up to a 'hostage situaltion' they will shoot first at anything suspicious (ie holding something that could be mistaken for a gun, which is pretty much anything)

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@James O'Brien

This was in the US. Unless some moved Worcester, Massachusetts, to the UK.

He was tried as a Juvenal. At 17 should of tried him as an adult and add 0 to that sentence. 110 months

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