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World of Warcraft attacker jailed in US
A World of Warcraft gamer has been sentenced to jail in the US for carrying out a cyber-attack that interfered with the service in Europe. Calin Mateias had been accused of flooding Blizzard Entertainment's computer servers with traffic between February and September 2010. He was said to have carried out the distributed denial of service (DDoS) assault to prevent rivals logging in. Thousands of players were caught up in the resulting disruption.
The Romanian citizen - who had been extradited to Los Angeles to face the charges - pleaded guilty in February to one count of causing damage to a protected computer. He has also paid $29,987 (£22,176) to Blizzard to cover the costs it racked up trying to repel the data deluge.
Calin Mateias carried out the DDoS attacks in 2010. He was indicted in 2004 for attacking Ingram Micro's online ordering system. That case was dropped by prosecutors "when Mateias was sentenced to one year in prison over the World of Warcraft affair."
(Score: 0, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 09 2018, @09:03AM
nt
(Score: 2, Disagree) by crafoo on Wednesday May 09 2018, @10:51AM (3 children)
Extradited for a non-violent crime against a computer? I don't know man. That doesn't seem right to me.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by looorg on Wednesday May 09 2018, @12:23PM (2 children)
... against a computer? Sure. Lets just forget about the probably thousands/millions of WOW players in Europe that couldn't play the game they paid for. I don't actually remember the incident at the moment, but I did have a WOW account at the time and there was a few occasions where Blizzard actually had to give away free days to users just to compensate them for various issues. A "free" day or two probably doesn't cost them that much, or I guess it could cost them as much as they feel like charging themselves for it (anything from 0 to X per day). So it's a fairly clear loss for them both financially and probably also in PR (if there is such a thing). I don't know if the $30k even covered their actual or claimed expenses.
I guess the only thing I can agree with here is that it seems somewhat odd that he should be tried in the USA. Why not just extradite him to where Blizzard has an office in Europe such as France?
(Score: 2) by coolgopher on Wednesday May 09 2018, @02:53PM (1 child)
Also, as much as DDoS jerks annoy me (especially when stuck staring at the WoW login screen), a year in prison? Really? Feels like a live-streamed public whipping would've been more suited to the crime.
(Score: 2) by looorg on Wednesday May 09 2018, @07:15PM
It does seem a bit heavy handed at first but since I have not read the verdict it's hard to say. It might be a matter of classification of the crime and damages inflicted. That he had to pay a $30k fine to Blizzard might be small amount compared to the cost they had, or claimed they had. They might have claimed millions of dollars in damages -- for the damage to their game, the servers, the technicians they had to get to deal with the problem, the support staff they had to pay to deal with the players and then for the "bribes" to the players. A high dollar amount of claimed damages might then be what increased the severity of the crime.
What still baffles me tho is that he was extradited to the USA. But some quick duckduckgo:ing (fuck google!) shows that it is not unheard of for European hackers to be extradited to the USA if the parent-company is American. British hackers, Russian hackers ... all sent to the warm embrace of Uncle Sam:s slammer. Perhaps they consider him some kind of cyber-terrorist?
While a year in an American jail, and then I would assume instant deportation back to Romania, might be harsh for most WOW players having your account permanently banned might be bad to. Heard players cry about all they "lost" when it happens, and somehow it's never their fault but a mistake. Don't know if his account was perma-banned tho but I think it would be a safe bet.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 09 2018, @11:49AM (1 child)
You got modded down for quoting from a character in Warcraft 2!
And what's this story all about you ask? Well, it has to do with WARCRAFT!
sigh..
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 09 2018, @07:09PM
'scuse me but we all aren't kiddy fiddlers so we don't know the lingo.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Grishnakh on Wednesday May 09 2018, @01:03PM (9 children)
So this guy is a Romanian citizen, and did something which affected a company's servers in Europe. I assume he was physically in Europe when he did this. So how on Earth was it justified to extradite him to the US, and prosecute and imprison him there?
I'm not claiming that his actions weren't crimes, but they were crimes *in Europe*. The US doesn't have any jurisdiction there. Why wasn't he prosecuted someplace in the EU?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 09 2018, @02:07PM (3 children)
Because US Blizzard lost money? Because Europeans are spineless to the US?
I am surprised he only got one year and not 20.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday May 09 2018, @02:50PM (2 children)
Because US Blizzard lost money?
According to TFS, only their European operations were affected.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 09 2018, @09:32PM (1 child)
And who funds their European operations?
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 09 2018, @10:50PM
Their European users.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Wednesday May 09 2018, @02:17PM (2 children)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday May 09 2018, @02:39PM (1 child)
Exactly. Blizzard should have dealt with this through the French or other EU court system. Surely these things are also prosecutable crimes in those countries, as well as civil matters (since this case was apparently both).
This whole thing totally seems like venue-shopping.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday May 10 2018, @02:22AM
I just called the courthouse in Marshall, Texas, and was reassured that "venue shopping" doesn't really happen in the United States. </sarcasm>
(Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Wednesday May 09 2018, @02:43PM (1 child)
For better or worse, countries with extradition treaties do this all the time. You are a victim in the country you live in, not the country the perpetrator is from.
What is the alternative? Make it ok to commit any crime you want as long as you do it online in another country?
Though it makes me wonder if an American scams the hell out of a Romanian, will extradition happen; presumably it has to be illegal in both places. Perhaps Romania just didn't want to deal with the douchebag; let the USA pay to lock him up, they are pretty good at it.
Also, the victim is a multinational company, so I don't know if my statements really work.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Grishnakh on Wednesday May 09 2018, @02:55PM
For better or worse, countries with extradition treaties do this all the time. You are a victim in the country you live in, not the country the perpetrator is from.
I get this, but according to TFS, the company is multinational, and only their European operations were affected.
For an analogy, suppose you were a German citizen, living in Germany, and you broke into a local Ford dealership (owned by Ford Motor Corporation, not an independent dealer like we have in the US) and stole stuff. Ford in Europe is a subsidiary of the US-based parent corporation, presumably. Should you be extradited to the US to face theft charges, or should you face charges in Germany, where the crime happened? Obviously, it should be in Germany. Of course, this case is a little different because it was on the internet, and crossed international borders, but it was still all within the EU (AFAICT), and affected a French company (that's a subsidiary of a US one, which itself is a subsidiary of another US one).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 09 2018, @03:14PM (1 child)
Sounds more like a Romulan to me.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 09 2018, @07:25PM
*reaches out for his copy of the dirty Hungarian phrasebook*