Finnish Lizard Squad Member Convicted For Xmas PSN, Xbox Live Attacks

Gamers are now a major source of web attacks, according to new report

A Finnish teenager has been convicted of more than 50,000 instances of Cybercrime, including the cyberattack that saw PSN and Xbox Live suffer from widespread outages during Christmas last year.

Julius Kivimaki, 17, was known as “zeekill” online. He claimed responsibility for the denial-of-service attacks perpetrated by the group calling themselves Lizard Squad, during a month that left millions unable to connect to the online gaming networks. The worst of these attacks took place over the week of Christmas, meaning that many were left unable to play their shiny new games online.

Shortly after the attacks, both the UK and Finnish authorities made a number of arrests, while Sony offered compensation to consumers affected by the outages.

Game companies are finding themselves increasingly targeted by distributed denial of service attacks (also known as DDOS), and the practice is becoming increasingly prevalent. One report, published earlier this year, claimed that 40% of the companies it spoke to had reported being hit by more than 21 attacks a month.

Kivimaki’s crimes include fraud, violation of company secrets, data breaches, felony payment fraud and extended to online harrassment, including making false threats to American law enforcement which saw at least one of his victims being confronted at gunpoint by authorities - a crime popularly known as “Swatting”.

But despite the severity of these crimes, Kivimaki escaped a jail sentence. Instead, he was handed a two-year suspended prison sentence and required to speak out publicly against cybercrime.

Speaking to The Daily Dot, one of Kivmaki’s victims said he was “absolutely disgusted” by the ruling.

“I’ve lost complete faither in the justice system, and that includes the FBI,” said Blair Strater. “He’s harmed American targets and the FBI should have stepped in by now. The reality is, Julius Kivimaki will never be made to pay for his crimes.”

Dale Morgan

Dale Morgan

Founder, Editor in Chief
When Dale isn't crying over his keyboard about his never-ending workload, he's playing games - lots of them. Dale has a particular love for RPGs, Roguelikes and Metroidvanias.
Dale Morgan

@spamdangled

EIC of @continueplaymag. Views are my own.
Today, we unblocked a clogged sink with a cotton bud and a wire coat hanger. @grumpygamer eat your heart out ;) - 3 weeks ago
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