Teenager sentenced to a "family conference"

Aug 21, 2016 23:00 GMT  ·  By

A judge at the Christies Beach Youth Court in Adelaide, Australia has sentenced a 15-year-old teenager to a "family conference" after the teen has launched DDoS attacks on his school, the Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA), and ACORN - the Australian Cybercrime Online Reporting Network portal.

The unnamed 15-year-old teenager who lives in Woodcroft admitted his crimes in court and said he carried out the DDoS attacks for fun and curiosity.

Kid was on a two-month DDoS spree

Authorities revealed the teenager started his DDoS spree when he launched a massive attack on the CBA online banking portal on February 26 this year that brought down the website for more than three hours.

Sometime in March, he also launched similar attacks against his school's IT systems, claiming he was bored in computer classes. The teenager later shifted the attacks from the school's system to its Internet provider.

On April 4, the teenager launched another attack on the ACORN portal but abandoned it after six minutes.

Teenager risked three years in prison

The school's principal reported the attacks to authorities, through the same ACORN portal targeted by the teen, and used by the country's e-crime fighting unit.

According to local media, authorities tracked down the kid's IP address and later arrested him at his home.

The state prosecutor didn't go after a severe punishment, even if legally the teen faced up to three years in jail. An adult committing the same crimes would have faced ten years in prison.

In Australian law, a family conference is when the court leaves the punishment to the family and a supervising youth police officer, who must agree with the punishment in order to consider the matter closed. Family conferences may require the teen to apologize publicly, pay compensation to the victims, carry out a number of hours of community service, or more.