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Hackers Get What They Deserve

Hackers Get What They Deserve

Hacking, hacking, hacking! Everybody is hacking these days. In fact hacking and cybercrime in general has become so prevalent, the government issued a press release all about Securing Cyberspace. It’s a pretty scary world when your personal information can be accessed by anyone who knows the right computer skills.

But it appears as if hackers may also be their undoing. Gamestop reported that hacking group Lizard Squad, who claimed responsibility for the Christmas blackout of Xbox Live and the PSN, has been hacked back! Lizard Squad was offering a “boot-for-hire” service, in which it allowed paying customers to suggest websites they wanted the hacking group to take down for a small fee. To date, over $11,000 in bitcoins have been spent on the service.

However, this service itself was hacked, with another user obtaining the personal details of over 14,000 people who signed up for the service. In a quite hilarious turn of events, all the info was stored in plain text, not even encrypted, making it relatively easy to steal.

While this list does let investigators know more about people who were using Lizard Squad’s services, it doesn’t necessarily get them closer to the members of Lizard Squad themselves. That being said, several Lizard Squad members have been arrested so far. Brian Krebs has provided details about the arrests on his blog.

The first is 22 year old Vincent Omari, who was arrested in relation to the attacks and under suspicion of “swatting” or calling in fake threats to the police in order to get them to storm a rival hacker or gamer’s house.  Another that has been questioned is Julius Kivimaki, who has been arrested and jailed in Finland before on credit card theft charges.

Hackers Get What They Deserve

The latest arrest is supposedly Jordan Lee-Bevan AKA Jordie. Jordie, in addition to being involved with the Christmas Day attacks, was also involved in a fake phone threat to Sandy Hook Elementary. If that name sounds familiar, it’s because it was where 20 year old Adam Lanza fatally shot 20 children and 6 adult staff members in December 2012. Jordie’s threats were made on September 2014, alongside a group of other males calling themselves the ISISGang.

This all sounds pretty horrible, and that’s because it is. This “nothing is sacred” attitude is dangerous, and the anonymity of the internet does a lot to separate people from the repercussions to their actions. While swatting might seem like a prank to some, people have gotten seriously injured and had their property broken as a result. Not only that, but according to the FBI each swatting attack costs taxpayers approximately $10,000 dollars.

What do you think? Does Lizard Squad deserve to be arrested? Or are these just children playing pranks? Let us know in the comments.

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