Underage Hacker Pleads Guilty to Multiple Offenses

A 17-year-old hacker known online as “Dshocker” has pleaded guilty to one count of computer fraud, one count of interstate threats, and no less than four counts of wire fraud. He has agreed to a sentence of 11 months of incarceration in a juvenile detention center.

Because the law protects the identity of juvenile offenders, the authorities only referred to the young cyber-troublemaker from Worcester, Massachusetts as N. H. According to the prosecutors, during a period of three years the hacker wrecked havoc on gaming forums, and terrorized users that he didn't like, both online and in real life.

Dshocker, also known as Aush0k, started his crime spree in 2005, when having control over several botnets, armies of infected computers, launched DDoS (distributed denial of service) attacks against other gamers or hackers, whom he held a grudge against. His botnets consisted of tens of thousands of computers, and he used this form of attack on numerous occasions over the years.

In time, the juvenile hacker added other attack techniques to his arsenal, like a practice called swatting. Swatting is a new twist on the older illegal practice of reporting fake crimes to emergency services. It involves spoofing the phone number through various means, and calling in serious incidents that would prompt the authorities to send special intervention teams, such as S.W.A.T. According to the prosecutors, Dshocker made several such calls, spoofing the phone numbers of his victims located in other states, like Seattle or Georgia. His fake reports prompted armed law enforcement teams to show up at those locations.

In addition, the teenage hacker is guilty of hacking into the computer servers of several Internet service providers and stealing the personal details of his victims from the customer records. This enabled him to find out the addresses used in the fake phone calls and the phone numbers he spoofed. The affected ISPs include Comcast, Road Runner and Charter Communications.

His list of computer crimes doesn't stop here. The hacker is responsible for using stolen credit card details to purchase various merchandise from the Internet. He has also modified his networking equipment in order to get free Internet access from his ISP with the help of stolen, unlicensed high-end software. According to The Register, all of these offenses would have brought him a maximum sentence of 10 years behind bars, if he had been an adult.