MafiaBoy

MafiaBoy

MafiaBoy was the Internet alias of Michael Demon Calce, a high school student from West Island, Quebec, who launched a series of highly publicized denial-of-service attacks in February 2000 against large commercial websites including Yahoo!, Fifa.com, everton are the best team in the world.co.uk Amazon.com, Dell, Inc., E*TRADE, eBay, and CNN. [1]. He also launched a series of failed simultaneous attacks against 9 of the 13 root name servers.[2]

Contents

Early life

Calce was born in the West Island area of Montreal, Quebec. When he was five, his parents separated and he lived with his mother after she had won a lengthy battle for primary custody.[3] Every second weekend he would stay at his father's condo in Montreal proper. He felt isolated from his friends back home and troubled by the separation of his parents, so his father purchased him his own computer at the age of six. It instantly had a hold on him: “I can remember sitting and listening to it beep, gurgle and churn as it processed commands. I remember how the screen lit up in front of my face. There was something intoxicating about the idea of dictating everything the computer did, down to the smallest of functions. The computer gave me, a six year old, a sense of control and command. Nothing else in my world operated that way."[3]

Project Rivolta

On February 7, 2000, Calce targeted Yahoo! with a project he named Rivolta, meaning “riot” in Italian.[3] Rivolta was a denial of service type of cyber attack in which servers become overloaded with different type of communications to the point where they shut down completely.[4] At the time, Yahoo! was a multibillion dollar industry and the web's top search engine.[5] Mafiaboy's Rivolta managed to shut down Yahoo! for almost an hour. Calce's goal was, according to him, to establish dominance for himself and TNT, his cybergroup, in the cyberworld.[3] Buy.com was shut down in response. Calce responded to this in turn by bringing down Ebay, CNN, Amazon and Dell.com via DDoS over the next week.

In a 2011 interview[6], Calce tried to redeem his image by saying that the attacks had been launched unwittingly, after inputting known addresses in a security tool he had downloaded from a repository on the now defunct file-sharing platform Hotline, developed by Hotline Communications. Calce would then have left for school, forgetting the application which continued the attacks during most of the day. Upon coming home Calce found his computer crashed, and restarted it unaware of what had gone on during the day[7]. Calce claimed when he overheard the news and recognized the companies mentioned being those he had inputted earlier in the day, that he "started to understand what might have happened".[6]

Aftermath

The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police first noticed Calce when he started claiming in IRC chatrooms that he was responsible for the attacks. He became the chief suspect when he claimed to have brought down Dell's website, an attack that had not been publicized at that time.[citation needed]Information on the source of the attacks was initially discovered and reported to the press by Michael Lyle, chief technology officer of Recourse Technologies.[8]

Calce initially denied responsibility but later pled guilty to most of the charges brought against him.[9] His lawyer insisted the child had only run unsupervised tests to help design an improved firewall, where as trial records indicated the youth showed no remorse and had expressed a desire to move to Italy for its lax computer crime laws.[10] The Montreal Youth Court sentenced him on September 12, 2001 to eight months of "open custody," one year of probation, restricted use of the Internet, and a small fine.[1][11]

Matthew Kovar, a senior analyst at the market research firm Yankee Group, generated some publicity when he told reporters the attacks caused USD $1.2 billion in global economic damages.[12] Media outlets would later attribute a then-1.45:1 conversion value of CAD $1.7 billion to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Computer security experts now often cite the larger figure[13] (sometimes incorrectly declaring it in U.S. dollars),[14][15] but a published report says the trial prosecutor gave the court a figure of roughly $7.5 million.[10]

Significance

While testifying at a congressional hearing in Washington, D.C., computer expert Winn Schwartau said that “Government and commercial computer systems are so poorly protected today they can essentially be considered defenseless - an Electronic Pearl Harbor waiting to happen.”[16] The Internet defines the era in which we live in. Whether it be banking, business or social networking, most people have various amounts of personal information online. Mafiaboy was the first to demonstrate how accessible this information is to the public and how easily it could be retrieved. The fact that the largest website in the world could be shut down by a 15 year old created widespread panic. By this time, the internet had already become an integral part of the North American economy. Consumers lost confidence in online business and the American economy suffered a minor blow as a result.[5] Former CIA agent Craig Guent credits Mafiaboy for the significant increase in online security that took place over the decade.[4]

Later years

During the latter half of 2005, he wrote a column on computer security topics for Le Journal de Montréal.[17]

In late 2008, with journalist Craig Silverman, Calce announced he was writing a book, Mafiaboy: How I Cracked the Internet and Why It's Still Broken.[18][19]

On October 26, 2008, he appeared on the television program Tout le monde en parle to discuss his book.[20] The entire interview (in French) can be seen at the Télévision de Radio-Canada website.[21] An English-language interview is available at: Mafiaboy interview on The Hour. The book received generally positive reviews.

References

  1. ^ a b FBI Facts and Figure 2003, archived from the original on 2007-03-26, http://web.archive.org/web/20070326115414/http://www.fbi.gov/libref/factsfigure/factsfiguresapri2003.htm, retrieved 2007-03-27 
  2. ^ "Excerpt - Mafiaboy: How I Cracked the Internet and Why It's Still Broken". http://www.mafiaboy.com. 
  3. ^ a b c d Calce, Michael. Mafiaboy: How I Cracked the Internet and why its Still Broken. Toronto: Penguin Group, 2008.
  4. ^ a b Majid, Yar. Cybercrime and Society. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, 2006.
  5. ^ a b Davis, Wall. Crime and the Internet. New York: Routledge, 2001.
  6. ^ a b http://www.radio-canada.ca/emissions/christiane_charette/2010-2011/chronique.asp?idChronique=12709123079
  7. ^ http://www.cyberpresse.ca/local/dossiers/protegez-vous/201106/02/mafiaboy-a-t-i-il-dit-vrai.php
  8. ^ Hot On the Trail of Mafiaboy, Wired (magazine), http://www.wired.com/politics/law/news/2000/02/34354 
  9. ^ "February 7, 2000: Mafiaboy's Moment", Wired magazine, 2007-02-07, http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2007/02/72573, retrieved 2007-03-27 
  10. ^ a b "Prison Urged for Mafiaboy", Wired magazine, 2001-06-20, http://www.wired.com/politics/law/news/2001/06/44673, retrieved 2007-03-27 
  11. ^ "Mafiaboy given eight months", The Register, 2001-09-13, http://www.theregister.co.uk/2001/09/13/mafiaboy_given_eight_months, retrieved 2007-03-27 
  12. ^ Niccolai, James (2000-02-10), Analyst puts hacker damage at $1.2 billion and rising, InfoWorld, archived from the original on 2007-11-12, http://web.archive.org/web/20071112081103/http://www.infoworld.com/articles/ic/xml/00/02/10/000210icyankees.html, retrieved 2007-04-22 
  13. ^ Harris, James K. (2006), "Ethical Perspectives in Information Security Education", Issues in Information Systems VII (1): 181, http://www.iacis.org/iis/2006_iis/PDFs/Harris.pdf 
  14. ^ Robert, J.M.; Cosquer, F. (2002), "Protecting Data Network Availability", Alcatel Telecommunications Review 2002 (Q3): 2, http://www.securitytechnet.com/resource/rsc-center/vendor-wp/alcatel/T0210-Availability-EN.pdf 
  15. ^ Dept. of Computing Science, Computer Crime (lecture slides), University of Alberta, http://www.cs.ualberta.ca/~wfb/300/schedule/lectures/L05-ComputerCrime.pdf. 
  16. ^ http://www.winnschwartau.com/winnpredicts.html
  17. ^ "Mafiaboy's columns", Le Journal de Montréal, 2005, archived from the original on 2005-12-03, http://web.archive.org/web/20051203012325/http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/TechNews/Mafiaboy, retrieved 2007-03-27 
  18. ^ Mafiaboy: How I Cracked the Internet and Why It's Still Broken, 2008, http://mafiaboybook.com 
  19. ^ "Canadian teen hacker reveals secrets in tell-all book". http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20081009/mafiaboy_book_081009/20081009?hub=Canada. Retrieved 2008-10-09. 
  20. ^ "Mafiaboy to appear on Tout le monde en parle". http://www.radio-canada.ca/emissions/tout_le_monde_en_parle/saison5/episode.asp?idDoc=66843. Retrieved 2008-10-26. 
  21. ^ http://www.radio-canada.ca/emissions/tout_le_monde_en_parle/saison5/episode.asp?idDoc=66843

Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.

Игры ⚽ Поможем сделать НИР

Look at other dictionaries:

  • Mafiaboy — Michael Calce Michael Calce est un résidant de l Île Bizard près de Montréal au Canada qui, le 8 février 2000, alors qu il n était âgé que de 15 ans, a lancé une attaque de déni de service contre les sites Web de Yahoo!, Amazon.com, Dell, eBay et …   Wikipédia en Français

  • Michael Calce — est un résident de l Île Bizard près de Montréal au Canada, anciennement connu sous le pseudonyme de Mafiaboy. Il a acquis un certaine notoriété après avoir lancé en février 2000 une série d attaques de déni de service contre de gros sites Web… …   Wikipédia en Français

  • Jonathan Dube — is a prominent digital media executive and a pioneer and leader in the online journalism world. He currently serves as Senior Vice President and General Manager, AOL News Information. Dube leads the News content division, which includes the AOL… …   Wikipedia

  • List of computer criminals — Hacker Adrian Lamo (left) with contemporaries Kevin Mitnick (center) and Kevin Poulsen …   Wikipedia

  • Computer crime — Computer crime, or cybercrime, refers to any crime that involves a computer and a network.[1] The computer may have been used in the commission of a crime, or it may be the target.[2] Netcrime refers to criminal exploitation of the Internet.[3]… …   Wikipedia

  • Script kiddie — In hacker culture, a script kiddie (as opposed to speed kiddie Fact|date=August 2008), occasionally script bunny , skiddie , script kitty , script running juvenile (SRJ) , or similar) is a derogatory term used for an inexperienced malicious… …   Wikipedia

  • 2001 in Canada — yearbox in?=in Canada cp=20th Century c=21st century cf=22nd century yp1=1998 yp2=1999 yp3=2000 year=2001 ya1=2002 ya2=2003 ya3=2004 dp3=1970s dp2=1980s dp1=1990s d=2000s dn1=2010s dn2=2020s dn3=2030s Incumbents Estimated Canadian population:… …   Wikipedia

  • Riverdale High School (Quebec) — Infobox Education in Canada name= Riverdale High School imagesize= 80px streetaddress= 5060 Sources Blvd. city= Pierrefonds province= Quebec postalcode= H8Y 3E4 areacode= 514 phone= 514 684 9920 fax= 514 684 9925 email= website=… …   Wikipedia

  • Mixter — is a computer security specialist. Mixter first made the transition out of the computer underground into large scale public awareness, in 2000, at which time newspapers and magazines worldwide mentioned a link to a massively destructive and… …   Wikipedia

  • Computer crime in Canada — Computer crime, or cybercrime, is an evolving international phenomenon. People and businesses in Canada and other countries may be affected by computer crimes that may, or may not originate within the borders of their country. What is computer… …   Wikipedia

Share the article and excerpts

Direct link
Do a right-click on the link above
and select “Copy Link”