wow WoW DDoSer Sentenced to 1 Year in Jail

[Stan 5,020]

A Romanian citizen was sentenced to one year in federal prison over the World of Warcraft affair.

According to a BBC report, Calin Mateias has been accused of flooding Blizzard Entertainment's computer servers with traffic between February and September 2010. He carried out the distributed denial of service (DDoS) to prevent rivals from logging in. Calin had been extradited to Los Angeles to face the charges and pleaded guilty in February to one count of causing damage to a protected computer. He had to pay $29,987 in restitution to Blizzard. Here's a press release of the Department of Justice:

Quote

LOS ANGELES – A Romanian computer hacker who orchestrated a series of distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks on the European servers of the massively multiplayer online role-playing game World of Warcraft was sentenced today to one year in federal prison.

Calin Mateias, 38, of Romania, was sentenced by United States District Judge Otis D. Wright II.

Mateias, who has been in custody since November 20 after being extradited from Romania, was also ordered to pay $29,987 in restitution to Blizzard Entertainment, the Irvine-based owner and operator of World of Warcraft, to compensate the company for labor costs associated with countering the computer attacks.

World of Warcraft is an online virtual world where players participate in a game using avatars. Mateias, using his in-game avatar, often participated in collaborative events, such as “raids,” where players joined forces to meet game objectives and were rewarded with virtual proceeds or in-game advantages. Mateias became involved in disputes with other players for a variety of reasons, including the division of loot and membership in raid teams.

Between February and September 2010, typically in connection with in-game disputes with other players, Mateias launched DDoS attacks on World of Warcraft servers in Europe. A DDoS attack is an attack on a computer network in which multiple computers are used to transmit a flood of superfluous requests to the target network, thereby overloading it, and making it unavailable to other users. Mateias’ DDoS attacks caused World of Warcraft servers to crash and prevented some paying customers from accessing the game.

After being indicted in this case in 2011 and extradited from Romania last year, Mateias pleaded guilty in February to one count of intentional damage to a protected computer.

This case is the result of an investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

The case was prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney Khaldoun Shobaki of the Cyber & Intellectual Property Crimes Section.

 

(Source)

[Slam 40]

Why would one care where he is from :S A dude messed up and got slapped for it! 

[Laragon 269]

47 minutes ago, Slam said:

Why would one care where he is from :S A dude messed up and got slapped for it! 

The exact location doesn't matter, but the fact that an international case was able to still have the grip to get someone sentenced is an important precedent for this kind of attack. Getting actual punishment for DDoS of "non-critical services" is really young in it's legal process, even more so when prosecuting from different countries.

[Valks 2,373]

49 minutes ago, Laragon said:

The exact location doesn't matter, but the fact that an international case was able to still have the grip to get someone sentenced is an important precedent for this kind of attack. Getting actual punishment for DDoS of "non-critical services" is really young in it's legal process, even more so when prosecuting from different countries.

Anything that shows something can be done is going to be a step towards deterring future attacks. I imagine Blizzard wanted to make a statement and, IMO, managed to do so.

[Badadada 184]

Is it the guy on the picutre? I imagine Blizz may turn him into an ingame mob - probably a boss in the new prison dungeon, Tol Dagor. Tactics would be a bunch of slow mechanics and on mythic a random disconnecting party member every 30 seconds.

[PatrickHenry 293]

2 hours ago, Slam said:

Why would one care where he is from

its just information.  

"Person does bad thing; penalized" doesn't just have the same relevance, I dont imagine.

[Amateurpeeweeeeh 37]

Why would you care that he is romanian,european,male,human,earthling. Just write entity commited ddos attack.

Wait why does it matter that it was an attack or that it was ddos. Just write entity did something.

 

Cry more. If someone does something and he is from somewhere. The one from somewhere did something. Ez no problem

[Damien 1,514]

I think the nationality is important in this case, because there had to be an extradition and that always complicates matters. This particular person has been wanted since 2004 by US authorities. First for hacking FBI servers and second for being the ringleader in an operation that defrauded Ingramm Micro of between $6,000,000 and $10,000,000 (number varies according to sources).

He's been in custody of the Romanian authorities for a while and served a 6-year prison sentence for the Ingramm Micro hack. He was released after 3 years for good behaviour and was immediately extradited to the US where he faced up to 90 years in prison. He must have worked a deal of some sort, because the he pleaded guilty of the DDOS attack against Blizzard and the Ingramm Micro charges were dropped (and the FBI hacking charges were dropped as well because of lack of actionable evidence).

It's also causing a bit of an outrage in Romania, because there have been instances of US soldiers stationed in this country committing crimes, only to be quickly flown back to the US without Romania ever managing to get them extradited. The most famous case is that of a US soldier that ran a stop sign and hit another car, killing a famous local musician (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teo_Peter). So people are wondering why the US managed to get this guy extradited while Romania can't seem to get these US soldiers back to Romania for judgement.

[Sharknad0 67]

44 minutes ago, Damien said:

I think the nationality is important in this case, because there had to be an extradition and that always complicates matters. This particular person has been wanted since 2004 by US authorities. First for hacking FBI servers and second for being the ringleader in an operation that defrauded Ingramm Micro of between $6,000,000 and $10,000,000 (number varies according to sources).

He's been in custody of the Romanian authorities for a while and served a 6-year prison sentence for the Ingramm Micro hack. He was released after 3 years for good behaviour and was immediately extradited to the US where he faced up to 90 years in prison. He must have worked a deal of some sort, because the he pleaded guilty of the DDOS attack against Blizzard and the Ingramm Micro charges were dropped (and the FBI hacking charges were dropped as well because of lack of actionable evidence).

It's also causing a bit of an outrage in Romania, because there have been instances of US soldiers stationed in this country committing crimes, only to be quickly flown back to the US without Romania ever managing to get them extradited. The most famous case is that of a US soldier that ran a stop sign and hit another car, killing a famous local musician (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teo_Peter). So people are wondering why the US managed to get this guy extradited while Romania can't seem to get these US soldiers back to Romania for judgement.

Interesting. Not surprising, but interesting. As an American, it makes me sick that people in some form of service (military, police, fire, paramedic) get privilege and passes. By bro-in-law is a multiple drug offender and burglar, but keeps getting slaps on the wrist because he used to be a paramedic. Makes me sick. These guys should be taken back to the countries in which they committed crimes to face what's coming to them.

Edited May 8, 2018 by Sharknad0

[Hedonismbot 9]

There was nothing tangible damaged or broken. I don't believe anything should happen to the gentleman. Over reaching laws and corporations and the judicial system is the real crime

[Valks 2,373]

15 hours ago, Hedonismbot said:

There was nothing tangible damaged or broken. I don't believe anything should happen to the gentleman. Over reaching laws and corporations and the judicial system is the real crime

You can probably argue that DDoS attacks damage a company's reputation pretty heavily. Regardless of who is to blame, no player likes not being able to log in.

[Sharknad0 67]

On 5/9/2018 at 8:19 AM, Hedonismbot said:

There was nothing tangible damaged or broken. I don't believe anything should happen to the gentleman. Over reaching laws and corporations and the judicial system is the real crime

That is probably one of the most ridiculous things I have read in a while. So much so, in fact, I am not even going to waste time typing the countless contradictory analogies that immediately come to mind.