14 DAY TRIAL // A 21-year-old hacker involved in the 2008 hijacking of the comcast.net domain name, which saw legitimate traffic being redirected to a rogue website, received a four-month prison sentence and was ordered to pay almost $130,000 in restitution.
For over five hours during 28 and 29 of May 2008, Comcast customers trying to access their webmail or voice mail via the company's website were redirected to a page reading "KRYOGENIKS Defiant and EBK RoXed COMCAST sHouTz to VIRUS Warlock elul21 coll1er seven".
Following an FBI investigation into the incident, authorities indicted three members of a hacking group called KRYOGENIKS for conspiring to damage a protected computer used in interstate and foreign commerce.
The alleged hackers were James Robert Black, JR., a.k.a. Defiant, 20, of Tumwater, Washington, Christopher Allen Lewis, a.k.a EBK, 19, of Newark, Delaware and Michael Paul Nebel, a.k.a. Slacker, 27, of Kalamazoo, Michigan
James Robert Black, JR., a.k.a. Defiant, now 21, was sentenced yesterday to four months in prison, four months of electronic home monitoring, 150 hours of community service, three years of supervised release and was ordered to pay $128,557 in restitution.
The hacker faced a sentence of five years in prison, but U.S. District Judge Benjamin H. Settle was lenient due to his extensive collaboration with the authorities.
Wired reports that Black agreed to make recorded phone calls to his former accomplices and served as an informant in another two cases during the past two years.
"Mr. Black and his Kryogenicks crew created risks to all of these millions of e-mail customers for the simple sake of boosting their own childish egos.
"The callous disregard of the dangers posed to others, as well as the arrogance and recklessness displayed by these, and other hackers in committing such crimes should be considered by the Court as a factor that weighs in favor of a significant prison sentence," Assistant United States Attorney Kathryn Warma, wrote in court fillings asking for prison time.
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