Photo: Alex Pantling (Getty Images)
A person behind a October 2016 cyberattack that temporarily crippled Sony’s Playstation Network and other online services has pleaded guilty to committing the act as a juvenile, Justice Department officials in New Hampshire said Thursday.
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Because the individual was a minor at the time, details about the incident, including the offender’s identity, remain sealed.
For no fewer than 11 months, officials said, the individual “conspired with others” to create possibly multiple botnets, one of which was used in 2016 to launch a distributed denial-of-service attack against the PlayStation Network. Sony estimated its revenue loss at $2.7 million, according to DOJ.
Sentencing Nears for Gamer Who DDoS d PlayStation Network as a Minor gizmodo.com.au - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from gizmodo.com.au Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Minor Behind 2016 PlayStation DDoS Attacks
An unnamed individual in the United States has pleaded guilty to creating a botnet and using it to launch a series of cyber-attacks against the gaming community before reaching their 18th birthday.
The Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks, carried out in October 2016, caused what the United States Department of Justice described as massive disruption to the internet.
As a result of the attacks, websites, including those pertaining to Sony, Twitter, Amazon, PayPal, Tumblr, Netflix, and Southern New Hampshire University (SNHU), became either completely inaccessible or accessible only intermittently for several hours on October 21, 2016. As a result of the individual’s DDoS attacks, Dyn, Sony, SNHU, and other entities and individuals suffered losses including lost advertising revenues and remediation costs, said the DOJ.