14 DAY TRIAL // A man from Oklahoma City is risking ten years in prison after harassing a security researcher that helped law enforcement catch and send to jail a fellow member of his hacking crew.
In 2009 and through 2011, Benjamin Earnest Nichols, 37, was part of the Electronik Tribulation Army (ETA) with the nickname c0aX, along with Jesse McGraw, known as GhostExodus, who was also the group's leader.
It all goes back to the GhostExodus incident
McGraw, a security guard at the North Central Medical Plaza in Dallas, was arrested in June 2009 for planting malware on the computers of a medical center specialized in orthopedics and sports medicine, where he was supposed to work until July 3, 2009.
The hacker was planning to use the malware to cause damage and even launch DDoS attacks on his former employee on July 4, 2009, a day which he affectionately nicknamed "Devil's Day."
The hacker's actions were unmasked by a graduate student at Mississippi State University, who informed and provided evidence to authorities. The investigation was also helped by the fact that McGraw also posted YouTube videos of himself installing the malicious software with the Mission Impossible theme playing in the background.
Following his arrest, the ETA leader was indicted in July 2009, and in May 2010, he pleaded guilty to two counts of transmission of malicious code. In March 2011, the hacker received an 110-month (over nine years) prison sentence for his crime.
Nichols wanted revenge on behalf of McGraw
After the judge announced McGraw's prison sentence, the student, now a security researcher and founder of his own company, posted an article about the case on his new security company's blog at mcgrewsecurity.com (McGrew Security).
Nichols, McGraw's ETA partner, considered the blog post contained false and disparaging remarks, so he decided to take revenge.
The second ETA member first mocked and harassed the researcher online and offline, by creating a website with derogatory comments aimed at McGrew, setting up an IRC bot to spew out insults on the researcher's IRC channel, and even sending him sex toys to his house.
Things didn't stop here, and Nichols resorted to launching DDoS attacks on the researcher's website, which suffered downtime and losses of between $5,000 and $6,500.
FBI was called in to investigate McGrew's harassment
Because McGrew, the researcher, was also a key witness in the McGraw (hacker) trial, the FBI got involved in the case and started investigating the source of all these pranks and DDoS attacks.
Authorities eventually caught up with Nichols' shenanigans, and arrested, indicted, and later released him on bond. He has now pleaded guilty to one count of "knowingly causing the transmission of a program or code to a protected computer," for which he risks up to ten years in prison
Below is a video of a member of ETA (supposedly Nichols) speaking on McGraw's wrongful conviction, and an interview with McGraw.
