Briton jailed for large-scale Liberian cyber attack

LONDON: A British man was jailed by a London court or orchestrating a massive cyber attack against a telecommunications company in Liberia two years ago.

Daniel Kaye, 30, was sentenced to 32 months in prison after pleading guilty to computer misuse and criminal property possession from late 2016 to early 2017.

The court heard the selftaught hacker was paid around US$30,000 (26,000 euros) by a rival to disrupt the systems of mobile phone company Lonestar MTN, Liberia’s biggest internet provider.

The so-called distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks overwhelmed its networks and meant its servers couldn’t operate properly, prosecutor Robin Sellers told the court.

The firm spent US$600,000 (523,000 euros) fixing the problem, losing tens of millions of dollars in revenue, he said.

Kaye’s lawyer, Jonathan Green, had argued Lonestar’s estimates of its losses were “unsupported by any evidence”.

“Nobody died, nobody’s life was imperilled, at worst Lonestar customers suffered slow internet speeds,” he argued.

Sentencing Kaye, Judge Alexander Hugh Milne called his actions a “cynical and financially driven attack upon a legitimate business enterprise”.

Kaye, a dual British and Israeli national, was extradited from Germany in August, 2017, under a European Arrest Warrant. That followed a joint investigation by Britain’s National Crime Agency (NCA) and Germany’s federal crime bureau BKA. — AFP

Greek school teachers scuffle with riot police during a demonstration in front of the parliament building against government plans to change hiring procedures in the public sector. — Reuters photo