DDoS Attacker Who Ruined Gamers’ Christmas Gets 27 Months in Prison

Jul 4, 2019

A 23-year-old hacker from Utah who launched a series of DDoS
attacks against multiple online services, websites, and online
gaming companies between December 2013 and January 2014 has been
sentenced to 27 months in prison.

Austin Thompson, a.k.a. “DerpTroll,” pledged guilty back in
November 2018 after he admitted to being a
part of DerpTrolling, a hacker group that was behind DDoS
attacks against several major online gaming platforms including
Electronic Arts’ Origin service, Sony PlayStation network, and
Valve Software’s Steam during Christmas.
^[1]

“Thompson typically used the Twitter account @DerpTrolling to
announce that an attack was imminent and then posted “scalps”
(screenshots or other photos showing that victims’ servers had been
taken down) after the attack,” the DoJ says.

According to a U.S. Department of Justice press
release ^[2] published Wednesday,
Thompson’s actions caused the victim companies at least $95,000 in
damages. The defendant was arrested in summer last year.

In addition to the prison sentence, the DoJ has also ordered the
defendant to pay $95,000 in restitution to Daybreak Games, formerly
Sony Online Entertainment.

Thompson is currently free on bond and has been ordered to
surrender to authorities on 23rd August 2019 in order to begin his
sentence.

“Denial-of-service attacks cost businesses and individuals
millions of dollars annually,” US Attorney Robert Brewer said. “We
are committed to prosecuting hackers who intentionally disrupt
internet access.”

However, it wasn’t just DerpTrolling that created chaos in 2014
by disrupting online gaming servers owned by Sony, Microsoft, Riot
Games, Nintendo, Valve, and Electronic Arts.

Lizard Squad, an infamous hacking group, also made headlines in
year 2014 by launching DDoS attacks against Microsoft’s Xbox Live
and Sony’s PlayStation Network and knocking them offline during the
Christmas holidays.

Several teenagers have since been arrested ^[3] and charged ^[4] around the world for
participating in the Lizard Squad 2014 DDoS attacks.

Julius Kivimaki, one of the Lizard Squad members who was
arrested by Finnish authorities in late 2014, was convicted in
Finland ^[5] in July 2015, receiving
a suspended prison sentence of two years for his actions.

References

^{^}
admitted to being a part of
DerpTrolling (thehackernews.com)
^{^}
press release
(www.justice.gov)
^{^}
arrested
(thehackernews.com)
^{^}
charged
(thehackernews.com)
^{^}
convicted in Finland
(thehackernews.com)

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OWASP TOP !0

Injection. Injection flaws, such as SQL, NoSQL, OS, and LDAP injection, occur when untrusted data is sent to an interpreter as part of a command or query. The attacker’s hostile data can trick the interpreter into executing unintended commands or accessing data without proper authorization. Broken Authentication. Application functions related to authentication and session management are often implemented incorrectly, allowing attackers to compromise passwords, keys, or session tokens, or to exploit other implementation flaws to assume other users’ identities temporarily or permanently. Sensitive Data Exposure. Many web applications and APIs do not properly protect sensitive data, such as financial, healthcare, and PII. Attackers may steal or modify such weakly protected data to conduct credit card fraud, identity theft, or other crimes. Sensitive data may be compromised without extra protection, such as encryption at rest or in transit, and requires special precautions when exchanged with the browser. XML External Entities (XXE). Many older or poorly configured XML processors evaluate external entity references within XML documents. External entities can be used to disclose internal files using the file URI handler, internal file shares, internal port scanning, remote code execution, and denial of service attacks. Broken Access Control. Restrictions on what authenticated users are allowed to do are often not properly enforced. Attackers can exploit these flaws to access unauthorized functionality and/or data, such as access other users’ accounts, view sensitive files, modify other users’ data, change access rights, etc. Security Misconfiguration. Security misconfiguration is the most commonly seen issue. This is commonly a result of insecure default configurations, incomplete or ad hoc configurations, open cloud storage, misconfigured HTTP headers, and verbose error messages containing sensitive information. Not only must all operating systems, frameworks, libraries, and applications be securely configured, but they must be patched/upgraded in a timely fashion. Cross-Site Scripting XSS. XSS flaws occur whenever an application includes untrusted data in a new web page without proper validation or escaping, or updates an existing web page with user-supplied data using a browser API that can create HTML or JavaScript. XSS allows attackers to execute scripts in the victim’s browser which can hijack user sessions, deface web sites, or redirect the user to malicious sites. Insecure Deserialization. Insecure deserialization often leads to remote code execution. Even if deserialization flaws do not result in remote code execution, they can be used to perform attacks, including replay attacks, injection attacks, and privilege escalation attacks. Using Components with Known Vulnerabilities. Components, such as libraries, frameworks, and other software modules, run with the same privileges as the application. If a vulnerable component is exploited, such an attack can facilitate serious data loss or server takeover. Applications and APIs using components with known vulnerabilities may undermine application defenses and enable various attacks and impacts. Insufficient Logging & Monitoring. Insufficient logging and monitoring, coupled with missing or ineffective integration with incident response, allows attackers to further attack systems, maintain persistence, pivot to more systems, and tamper, extract, or destroy data. Most breach studies show time to detect a breach is over 200 days, typically detected by external parties rather than internal processes or monitoring.

DDoS Attacker Who Ruined Gamers’ Christmas Gets 27 Months in Prison

References

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