UK hackers jailed over PayPal attack
2013-01-24 20:49
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London - Two computer hackers were jailed by a London
court on Thursday for a series of cyber-attacks by the hacking group Anonymous
that cost the US online payments giant PayPal millions of dollars.
Christopher Weatherhead, a 22-year-old student, was
sentenced to 18 months in jail after being found guilty last month of carrying
out attacks on PayPal, MasterCard, Visa and other companies that refused to
process payments to the whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks.
Ashley Rhodes, 28, admitted the same charge of conspiring
to impair the operation of computers between 1 August 2010 and 22 January 2011
and was jailed for seven months.
Another hacker, 24-year-old Peter Gibson, had also
pleaded guilty but was deemed to have played a lesser role in the attacks and
was given a six-month suspended sentence.
A fourth man, 18-year-old Jake Birchall, who also
admitted his involvement, will be sentenced later.
PayPal was repeatedly attacked in December 2010 after the
website decided not to process payments made to the Wau Holland Foundation, an
organisation involved in raising funds for WikiLeaks.
During Weatherhead's trial, prosecutors said the attack had
cost the company $5.5m in loss of trading as well as software and hardware
updates to fend off similar attacks.
The so-called distributed denial of service (DDoS)
attacks, paralyse computer systems by overloading them with online requests.
Targeted websites were directed to a page reading:
"You've tried to bite the Anonymous hand. You angered the hive and now you
are being stung."
In a campaign codenamed "Operation Payback",
Anonymous also targeted companies in the music industry and opponents of music
piracy including the Ministry of Sound nightclub and record label, the trial
had heard.
