Hacker jailed over global campaign of cyber attacks
A YOUNG computer hacker who wreaked international havoc in cyber attacks launched from his Shetland bedroom was yesterday locked up for two years.
Jake Davis, 20, spent his days crippling highly- sensitive computer networks including the CIA and the UK’s Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA) after becoming withdrawn and depressed as a teenager, a court heard.
From his remote home in Shetland, he acted as press secretary for a ‘pirate’ group known as LulzSec, whose online war against major organisations and companies cost their victims at least £50million. Now the youngster could face extradition to the United States after it emerged two grand jury indictments have been lodged against him and two other defendants.
His lawyer, Simon Mayo, QC, said: ‘There is an appetite in the United States to prosecute defendants for this type of offence.’
As well as targeting US governmental computers, the group also brought down the networks of firms such as Sony and Nintendo and media organisations including Fox News and News International. They even planted a bogus story on a newspaper website falsely reporting the death of newspaper proprietor Rupert Murdoch.
They stole the personal information of millions – 750,000 items of personal data were recovered from Davis’s computer alone – and published them online.
Davis, who used the alias Topiary, would then brag online about the group’s domination of cyberspace, boasting once: ‘We are Gods now’. Davis appeared i n Southwark Crown Court for sentencing along with three other hackers, Ryan Ackroyd, 26, Ryan Cleary, 21, and Mustafa Al-Bassam, 18.
Ackroyd, identified as the ringleader, was jailed for two years and six months, while Cleary, who provided the software to carry out the attacks, was sentenced to two years and eight months. Cleary will be sentenced later in relation to a stash of pornographic images of children and child abuse videos found on his computer.
Davis was given two years in a Young Offenders’ Institute while Al-Bassam was handed a 20 month suspended sentence and 300 hours community service.
The court was told that Davis had suffered setbacks which had led to ‘intermittent depression’.
Mr Mayo said Davis moved to the islands aged six when his mother decided to take him and his brother away from their alcoholic father.
But when Davis was 12, his mother’s partner died after falling asleep at the wheel of his car.
Mr Mayo said: ‘It impacted on him as he had to watch his mother go through the loss of someone she cared about, and losing someone he too had genuine affection for.’
In 2010, Davis took a drug overdose – and in that year his natural father committed suicide shortly after trying to re-establish contact with his son.
This was the context, Mr Mayo said, in which Davis was ‘sucked into’ cyber crime.
The LulzSec group took inspiration from the notorious hacking group Anonymous. Prosecutor Sandip Patel said: ‘They saw them- selves as latter-day pirates, scouring the internet for vulnerable computer systems.’
All four admitted offences under the Computer Misuse Act 1990.
Davis, who now lives in Spalding, Lincolnshire, admitted hacking and launching cyber attacks on a range of organisations, including the CIA and SOCA
Judge Deborah Taylor said: ‘You caused substantial loss, all for your own personal amusement and to further your sense of power.’
Last night, Andrew Hadik, the Crown Prosecution Service lawyer, said the group’s actions were ‘cowardly and vindictive’.
In an i nterview with BBC2’ s Newsnight programme, Davis said he regretted ‘95 per cent of the things I’ve ever typed on the internet’.
He added: ‘It was my world but it was a very limited world. You can see and hear it, but you can’t touch the internet.
‘It’s a world devoid of empathy – and that shows on Twitter and the mob mentality against politicians and public figures. There is no empathy.
‘So it was my world, and it was a very cynical world and I became a very cynical person.’