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posted by takyon on Sunday December 09 2018, @11:56PM   Printer-friendly
from the what-are-you-in-for? dept.

Submitted via IRC for SoyCow1984

Bomb Threat Hoaxer, DDos Boss Gets 3 Years — Krebs on Security

The ringleader of a gang of cyber hooligans that made bomb threats against hundreds of schools and launched distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks against Web sites — including KrebsOnSecurity on multiple occasions — has been sentenced to three years in a U.K. prison, and faces the possibility of additional charges from U.S.-based law enforcement officials.

George Duke-Cohan, 19, caused a massive uproar earlier this year after communicating a series of bomb threats against 1,700 schools, colleges and universities across the United Kingdom. But shortly after being arrested on suspicion of the threats and released, Duke-Cohan was back at it again — this time expanding his threats to include schools in the United States. At the same time, authorities in the U.K. and U.S. discovered that Duke-Cohan was responsible for falsely reporting the hijack of a plane bound for the United States. That flight, which had almost 300 passengers on board, was later quarantined in San Francisco pending a full security check.

Duke-Cohan was part of an attention-seeking group of ne’er-do-wells who called themselves the Apophis Squad. Duke-Cohan and his crew modeled themselves after the actions of the Lizard Squad, another group of e-fame seeking online hoodlums who also ran a DDoS-for-hire service, called in bomb threats to airlines, DDoSed this Web site repeatedly and whose members were nearly all subsequently arrested and charged with various cybercrimes.

[...] Further reading:

Schools Bomb Hoaxes: Teenager Jailed for Nationwide Threats

A video of the the U.K. National Crime Agency (NCA) questioning and detaining Duke-Cohan.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 10 2018, @01:18PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 10 2018, @01:18PM (#772350)

    Just because it is a consequence of their actions doesn't mean it was the goal. Indeed if they attempted to remain anonymous it would seem they were trying to avoid attention.

    Careful of the horns effect.