A British teenager received a minimal punishment for bringing down an online gambling site, though he was also given a stern tongue-lashing from the judge.
In early 2014, Max Whitehouse, then 17-years old, initiated a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack against a European online gambling site. The Nottingham teen created problems for the UK-facing site, as his attack caused it to go offline for a short amount of time. The site, which has not been named, estimated that the attack cost it £18,000 in combined lost revenue from the downtime and expenses required to get things back up and running.
Whitehouse is now 19-years old and fortunately for him, Queens Court Judge Michael Stokes only gave him a 12-month suspended sentence on Friday, along with a £200 fine. Whitehouse could have received as much as ten years for the charge of “carrying out an unauthorized and reckless act with intent to impair computer operations,” to which he pleaded guilty.
While what Whitehouse did was wrong and certainly cost the site a chunk of change, Judge Stokes did not believe he was truly trying to do anything malicious and believed the young man when he said he was just trying to see if he could pull off the stunt. It did not take long for authorities to trace the source of the attack (despite DDoS attacks, by nature, being difficult to trace) and it didn’t help that he bragged about it on his mother’s Twitter account.
So ok, fine, we can chalk up Whitehouse’s transgression to being a bored teenager. But law enforcement’s raid on his house uncovered some items that were a bit more disturbing. Whitehouse had been collecting an assortment of weapons including tear gas canisters, eight sets of brass knuckles (does he not realize he has but two hands, or does he have a gang?), and a stun gun disguised as an iPhone.
Judge Stokes told him, in so many words, that he needs to grow up and get a life. “He has been living a virtual life and not a real life. He needed to get out more and play rugby or something,” said the judge, according to local reports.
As to not coming down hard on the defendant for the weaponry, the judge told Whitehouse, “You were, at the relevant time, extremely naive. I am satisfied you had no intention whatsoever of selling or distributing any of those items.”
Distributed Denial of Service attacks are unfortunately not uncommon in the online gambling world. Perhaps the most notable victim has been the U.S.-facing Winning Poker Network (WPN), which has been hit by multiple attacks within the last thirteen months. The attackers targeted WPN whenever the network tried to host its ambitious Million Dollar Sundays, causing tables to freeze, players to get disconnected, and all sorts of lag. Partially because of the DDoS attacks, WPN was stuck paying hundreds of thousands of dollars in overlay for the tournaments.
