MafiaBoy
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
MafiaBoy was the Internet alias of a 15-year-old high-school student from the upscale neighborhood of West Island in Montreal, Canada. In 2000, he launched denial-of-service attacks against the websites of Yahoo!, Amazon.com, Dell, Inc., E*TRADE, eBay, and CNN. Due to the Canadian Youth Criminal Justice Act, publication of his real name (in connection with this incident) is illegal.
The FBI and Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) first noticed MafiaBoy when he started claiming in IRC chatrooms that he was responsible for the attacks. He became the chief suspect when he claimed to have brought down Dell's website, an attack that had not been publicized at that time.
Some speculate MafiaBoy might have used cracking tools given to him by others, but it's still unclear which tools he had used prior to his arrest.
Initially denying responsibility and claiming to be running tests to help design an improved firewall, MafiaBoy changed his plea on the first day of his trial and pleaded guilty to 55 charges. He was sentenced to 8 months in a youth detention centre.
The attacks are estimated to have caused around $1.7 billion USD in damages.
As of September 21, 2005, he now serves as an Internet Security columnist for Le Journal de Montreal, a major francophone newspaper in Montreal.
MafiaBoy was responsible for kick-starting the internet security revolution. His actions showed to the internet community how vulnerable they where to such attacks. Many internet security companies owe their existence to the February attacks on DELL, CNN, Yahoo, and Amazon.
