14 DAY TRIAL // Alexander Waterland, aged 25, of Loveland, Ohio, has been sentenced to one year and one day in prison and two years of supervised release. He has been convicted for trying to blackmail the University of Pittsburgh.
Waterland downloaded some information, including student and faculty details, from a University of Pittsburg server. With the aid of an accomplice, Brett Hudson, he created YouTube and Twitter accounts with the name “AnonOperative13.”
Posing as Anonymous hackers, the two published a video and sent out some tweets and emails, threatening to release the data they copied from the server of the University of Pittsburgh unless the educational institution’s representatives posted a public apology to students, law enforcement and professors on their site’s home page.
Waterland and Hudson claimed to have obtained over 200 gigabytes of information, including credit card information. They accused the university of not securing their students’ information and of helping law enforcement arrest innocent individuals related to Anonymous.
At the time, the University of Pittsburgh was also facing another problem. Someone was making bomb threats against the institution.
However, the hackers highlighted the fact that they were not involved with the individuals who attempted to extort the university with bomb threats.
According to court documents obtained by SecurityWeek, investigators found several pieces of evidence connecting Waterland to the extortion scheme on his computer and smartphone.
His smartphone contained a large number of images of individuals with Anonymous masks and his computer was appointed as being the one that accessed the AnonOperative13 YouTube account.
Authorities have also learned that AnonOperative13 made threats against other organizations as well, including Georgia College and State University, and Alliance Computers.
Brett Hudson has also pleaded guilty, but the details of his sentencing have not been made public.