Teen Responsible for Hacking of Playstation, Xbox Networks Last Christmas Found Guilty
A teenager in Finland has been convicted for his role in hacking the PlayStation and Xbox networks last December.
The hacks forced the two networks to shut down for several days in late December, starting on Christmas morning, according to Sky News.
The 17-year-old was convicted of 50,700 offenses for being involved in the hacks. The teen, known as "zeekill," is part of the Lizard Squad network, a group of hackers that has taken credit for major hacking attacks in the past few years.
Even though zeekill helped take down the two popular gaming networks, he was given a pretty light punishment. A court in Finland gave him a two-year suspended sentence. He will also have to help fight cyber crimes as part of his sentence. His name is not being released because he is a minor. However, the Daily Dot has identified him as Julius Kivimaki, citing Finnish media.
It took some time to identify the hackers that were attached to the Lizard Squad network. Security analyst Brian Krebs published a blog post that named some of the suspects, including zeekill, earlier this year.
The attacks on the PlayStation and Xbox networks by the Lizard Squad caused them to go offline for several days around the Christmas holiday, leaving many people who had just received the game consoles as gifts unable to play with them.
It led to many parents complaining that "Christmas was ruined," according to their tweets to Xbox and PlayStation, the Daily Mail reports.
This April, zeekill was also questioned for his role in a harassment campaign against a 20-year-old. The 20-year-old's phone number was posted online, claiming to be a phone number for a contest to win a Tesla car. As a result, thousands of people called the number.
Zeekill was also found guilty of tampering with servers at MIT and Harvard University as well as money laundering by the Espoo District Court.
With the light sentence handed down to zeekill, the Twitter account for the Lizard Squad responded with joy.
"Zeekill got a suspended sentence for 2 years. 0 time spent in prison," one tweet said.
"Basically he'll be monitored for 2 years by the local police. Gotta love Finland :)," another tweet read.
"All the people that said we would rot in prison don't want to comprehend what we've been saying since the beginning, we have free passes," a final tweet said.
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