Finnish Teen Convicted of 50,000 'Hacks,' Receives Suspended Sentence

Bearhouse writes: The BBC reports that Julius Kivimaki was found guilty of 50,700 "instances of aggravated computer break-ins." Court documents state that his attacks affected Harvard University and MIT among others, and involved hijacking emails, blocking traffic to websites, and the theft of credit card details.District Court Judge Wilhelm Norrmann noted that Kivimaki had only been 15 and 16 when he carried out the crimes in 2012 and 2013. Because of this, the court gave him a two-year suspended sentence. Contrast this to the treatment meted out to Aaron Swartz, and the Pirate Bay team.

Comments

Difference: CFAA in the US

[Virtucon]

Blame the CFAA for the difference in draconian treatment of computer system abusers in the US; therefore blame congress and the administration for not updating the legislation or deferring prosecution. Sure, there are cyber criminals who deserve to be punished but there's also an increasing number of examples where the CFAA has been applied on incidents that don't even belong in court. If you give prosecutors tools like the CFAA, you can sure bet that they'll leverage them to get the maximum conviction possible.