Teenagers from the hacker group known as Lizard Squad, which was responsible for the downtime suffered by both Xbox Live and PlayStation Network in late 2014, were charged with cyber crimes this week.
This information was revealed in a press release (via Polygon) from the Department of Justice, revealing that Zachary Buchta and Bradley Jan Willem van Rooy were charged with conspiring to damage protected computers. Buchta and van Rooy, both aged 19, were arrested in September, with Buchta being taken into custody in Maryland. Van Rooy is still in custody in the Netherlands.
The charges keep into light after an investigation by US authorities into a website that enables people to pay to have harassing phone calls made to a target. In one particular case, a person in Illinois received threatening calls every hour for 30 days straight. Lizard Squad also launched distributed denial-of-service attacks, better known as DDoS attacks, on unspecified “gaming, entertainment, and media companies.”
Around and on Christmas in 2014, the Xbox Live and PSN were famously taken down. Lizard Squad immediately claimed responsibility for the attack on Twitter. A month after that, a hacking tool sold by the group was itself hacked, revealing the identities of more than 14,000 people who had signed up for it.
What is your take on this? What do you make of the teenagers’ arrest? Share your thoughts and views on this latest development by commenting in the comments section below.
