14 DAY TRIAL // Cosmo the God, the now-famous 15-year-old UGNazi hacker, has been sentenced by a juvenile court. The sentence doesn’t involve prison, but something that could be described by some as being worse: for the next six years, he will not be allowed to use the Internet.
According to Wired, until he turns 21, Cosmo can only use the Web if he obtains consent from his parole officer. Furthermore, he can never go online unsupervised and he cannot access the Internet for anything else than education-related purposes.
In order to get this sentence, instead of being locked up, Cosmo pleaded guilty to several charges, including credit card fraud, online impersonation, bomb threats, and identity theft.
He has also agreed to hand over all his account credentials, and disclose all the devices he can use to connect to a network.
He is strictly prohibited from communicating with anyone associated with Anonymous, his old crew, and other individuals from the hacking scene.
Legal experts have told Wired that the decision to deprive the youth of Internet access for such a long time is a bit harsh, considering that it could ruin his professional career.
“You’re talking about a really bright, gifted kid in terms of all things Internet. And at some point after getting on the right path he could do some really good things,” Jay Leiderman, a Los Angeles attorney who specializes in representing suspected hackers, said.
He added, “At some level it’s like taking away Mozart’s piano.”
UGNazi is responsible for disrupting and breaching several high-profile websites, including the ones of NASDAQ, CIA, Department of Justice, WHMCS, 4Chan and CloudFlare.
In the meantime, the UGNazi collective still has some supporters. Last month, they hacked into Soulja Boy’s Twitter and YouTube accounts.
On YouTube, they changed some of his videos’ descriptions to display a link to the group’s old Twitter account.