‘DerpTrolling’ group also attacked Dota 2, Battle.net
Another hacker behind attacks on Daybreak Game Company, then known as Sony Online Entertainment, is going to prison. Austin Thompson of Utah will be behind bars for the next 27 months, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of California announced Tuesday.
Thompson, 23, pleaded guilty in November (official charge: “Damage to a Protected Computer”) in connection with attacks in late 2013 against SOE; his group, “DerpTrolling,” was allegedly behind several denial-of-service attacks on online service for several SOE games, plus Battle.net, League of Legends, and Dota 2 in late 2013.
Thompson’s attacks preceded by about six months those of a group calling itself Lizard Squad, which targeted SOE and even made a bomb threat that forced a flight carrying its then-president to land. Thompson was not involved in those crimes.
In early January 2014, whoever was running DerpTrolling’s Twitter account said that federal agents had shown up at their home, but they had escaped through the bathroom. Thompson’s plea agreement said he was in charge of that account.
“Thompson typically used the Twitter account @DerpTrolling to announce that an attack was imminent and then posted ‘scalps’ (screenshots or other photos showing that victims’ servers had been taken down) after the attack,” prosecutors said in a statement.
Thompson will begin serving his sentence Aug. 23. He was also ordered to pay $95,000 in restitution to Daybreak Game Company.
Although unrelated, prosecutors in the United States and Finland also secured convictions for two members of Lizard Squad for their roles in attacks on the same target over the 2014 holidays. Zachary Buchta, then 20, of Maryland, received three months in federal prison and was ordered to pay $350,000 in restitution after his guilty plea in late 2017. And Julius Kivimaki was convicted in Finland in July 2015, receiving a two-year suspended prison sentence for his actions.
Source: https://www.polygon.com/2019/7/3/20680975/soe-hacker-sentenced-derptrolling-austin-thompson-utah
