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Tag: Prison
SOE DDOS’er Gets 27 Months In Prison, $95 Thousand Fine
Another Sony Online Entertainment hacker is going to prison after entering a plea deal with prosecutors. Austin Thompson of Utah pleaded guilty to his part in a denial of service attack on Sony Online Entertainment’s servers as well as other victims between 2013 and 2014. Thompson, for those who recall, headed the hacker group Derp Trolling, and took down a number of services for hours at a time, boasting about his deeds on Twitter for the world to see.
Thompson faced a maximum of 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine under 18 U.S.C. § 1030(a)(5)(A), Damage to a Protected Computer.
“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. The attacks took down game servers and related computers around the world, often for hours at a time. According to the plea agreement, Thompson’s actions caused at least $95,000 in damages.”
The $95,000 fine will be paid to Daybreak Game Company, formerly Sony Online Entertainment.
Source: Justice.gov
Forget Civil Court, Tencent Is Sending PUBG Cheaters To Prison
We’ve seen a lot of discussion about the morality of Epic Games suing people, including minors, for advertising their cheats in Fortnite, but while court-enforced injunctions may prevent some cheat makers from re-offending, Tencent over in China is taking a different approach; they’re getting law enforcement involved.
According to a report out of Bloomberg, Tencent has assisted Chinese police in taking down more than 120 people in 30 cases involving the creation and distribution of cheats for PUBG and is branching out into its other titles. The individuals under arrest are being charged with violating China’s criminal laws on disrupting computer networks, and unlike Epic Games’ simple injunctions, can and have faced jail times of up to five years as well as massive fines.
“PUBG is going through a puberty of sorts and cheaters threaten to stunt its growth,” said Kim Hak-joon, who analyzes gaming stocks for South Korea’s Kiwoom Securities Co. “Cheaters mostly drive away new users, and without retaining new users, PUBG won’t be able to consolidate its early success and become a long-lasting hit.”
This is not the first case of authorities cracking down on video game crimes. Last year, Jiangsu police arrested a Counter Strike: Global Offensive cheat developer who now faces up to 15 years in prison. In South Korea, a 17 year old was arrested for developing and selling cheats for Overwatch. Over in Japan, police have made use of the Unfair Competition Prevention Law in order to prosecute people creating and selling cheats for video games like Alliance of Valiant Arms and Sudden Attack. In 2014, two men were sentenced to prison in China after scamming people of digital items and selling them for cash.
In some cases, developers are assisting the police in cracking down on criminal offenses, however the police are the entities pressing the actual criminal charges.
ArcheAge Criminal Sentenced To 13 Hours Prison
Criminals beware, you’re in for a fair…trial. ArcheAge has one of the most interesting crime systems that I have ever seen. It is far too complicated to explain in this article, but the gist of the system is that crimes leave behind evidence that can be found by other players, and if you die as a criminal you are sent to a court and sentenced by a jury of five players. As one gamer found out in the alpha test, that sentence can be rather harsh. Especially if you’ve racked up over one hundred charges. As you can see from the screenshot above, the player was sentenced to 770 minutes in prison, or just under thirteen hours.
Prisoners in ArcheAge can either wait through their sentence or try to break out.
(Thanks to DSWBeef for uncovering this, and credit to Reizla in the same thread for the picture)
MMO Fallout 