14 DAY TRIAL // Imagine this: you're at home, watching a movie with your girl/boyfriend. Calm and quiet atmosphere. Without even doubting that something might happen you're enjoying a cup of coffee. But BOOM! Somebody shouts at you "This is POLICE, put your hands on the wall, everything you say can and will be used against you in court of law!" What the heck, you might say, but I'm sure you would be so shocked that you would say nothing. Well, they were SWAT officers and burst into your house because they were informed there was a hostage crisis. That is what happened to approximately 100 people as Wired informed today, due to a group of hackers who changed their Caller IDs to send fake alerts to the police.
But what's more interesting is that one of the group members was living in Boston, being minor and? blind. I guess he really thought this was fun but he's now facing a really tough sentence. Wired reported that the teenager hacker was nicknamed M.W. and helped the group with numerous details about the victims such as phone numbers and other information.
Stuart Rosoff of Cleveland, Ohio, a member who pleaded guilty, claimed he had collaborated with M.W. to get "telephone numbers, pass phrases, employee identification numbers, and employee account information used by the conspirators by various means including through 'social engineering' or pretexting of telephone calls to telecommunications company employees, 'war dialing', trafficking in pass phrases and access information with other phone 'phreakers,' etc," as it is mentioned in a stipulation according to Wired.
It seems like the group of "swatters" as they are named by the same publication caused damages of about $120,000 - $250,000 so the fine they may receive could be pretty huge.
For more information about the case, feel free to read the entire article published by Wired available here.