22-year-old Anonymous hacker given 18-month jail termJanuary 25, 2013 - 11:49 AMT PanARMENIAN.Net - Anonymous hacker Christopher Weatherhead has been handed an 18-month jail sentence for carrying out a series of high-profile distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks. The 22-year-old was previously convicted of hacking into the websites of Visa, Mastercard and PayPal, costing the latter an estimated £3.5 million, Digital Spy reported citing Sky News. Fellow Anonymous members Ashley Rhodes and Peter Gibson were tried alongside Weatherhead at Southwark Crown Court, receiving seven months in jail and a six-month sentence, suspended for two years, respectively. Rhodes, 28, was found guilty of conspiring with Weatherhead to impair the operations of the targeted businesses between 2010 and 2011, while 24-year-old Gibson was deemed to have played a lesser role, which he admitted to. A fourth man, 18-year-old Jake Birchall, has also admitted to playing a part in the conspiracy and will be sentenced at a later date. DDoS attacks overload computer systems by hitting them with an impossible number of requests simultaneously. Victims of the Weatherhead-led attacks, referred to as Operation Payback, received the following message: "You've tried to bite the Anonymous hand. You angered the hive and now you are being stung." The ring leader is believed to have targeted Paypal after it refused to process transactions for the Wau Holland Foundation, a group attempting to raise funding for WikiLeaks. Top stories Yerevan will host the 2024 edition of the World Congress On Information Technology (WCIT). Rustam Badasyan said due to the lack of such regulation, the state budget is deprived of VAT revenues. Krisp’s smart noise suppression tech silences ambient sounds and isolates your voice for calls. Gurgen Khachatryan claimed that the "illegalities have been taking place in 2020." Partner news Most popular in the section | The Power of One Dram to benefit Road of Life charity The companies inform that the May beneficiary of The Power of One Dram is the “Road of Life” charitable organization. Kazakhstan welcomes Yerevan, Baku’s agreement to meet in Almaty Kassym-Jomart Tokayev has welcomed the agreement of Baku and Yerevan to hold negotiations in Almaty. Armenia offers to temporarily host, preserve Gaza manuscripts The Armenian Foreign Minister has said Yerevan is ready to help preserve manuscripts from the conflict zone in Gaza. Aliyev says no need for mediators in Armenia-Azerbaijan process Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev believes that Baku and Yerevan do not mediators in the process of normalizing relations. |