14 DAY TRIAL // Akill, a 18-year-old hacker from Whitianga, has pleaded guilty to charges of accessing computer systems without authorization in order to obtain illegal revenues and some other charges, Network World reported today. In case you missed the news, Akill is a teenager who managed to infiltrate into the University of Pennsylvania's computer system with the help of a local student named Ryan Goldstein. According to the same source, Owen Walker's and Ryan Goldstein's attacks caused damages of about $13,000 to the university. Moreover, the two teenagers recorded revenues of about NZ$40,000.
"He will be sentenced on May 28, and a pre-sentencing report will be prepared between now and then. The pre-sentence report would cover home detention, community detention and community work, said Judge Arthur Tompkins," Network World mentioned in the article.
What's interesting is that the boy received all the money from adware companies which paid him for installing adware on computers all over the world, as the same publication notes. Although the entire international ring included many more members, AKILL is the one responsible for most attacks as he is suspected to be the leader of the group.
According to the FBI official website, Ryan Goldstein, the 21-year-old AKILL's accomplice, "was indicted on 11/01/07 by a federal grand jury in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania for botnet related activity which caused a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack at a major Philadelphia area university."
Although he did quite important damages, it seems like he may not receive a prison sentence. And what's worse is that his parents received money from the teenager and they even "knew he was making money out of doing online work but they did not realize he was engaged in illegal activity," the same source mentioned above reports.