15 Years Old Student Arrested For Hacking into 259 Firms in 3 Months

15 Years Old Student Arrested For Hacking into 259 Firms in 3 Months:

15 Years Old Student Arrested For Hacking into 259 Firms across the span of 3 months

Austrian police have arrested a 15-year-old student suspected of hacking into 259 companies across the span of three months. In other words, during the last quarter he successfully attacked an average of three websites per day. Experts are saying that scanned the Internet for vulnerabilities and bugs in websites and databases that he could then exploit. According to a report of Zdnet - The boy allegedly stole data and published it publicly after breaching the security infrastructures of 259 firms. He also defaced many company websites and boasted about his accomplishments on Twitter, where he also posted links to his data dumps. The firms were attacked between January 2012 and March 2012, and they were not limited to just Austria. He didn’t seem to target specific types of industries: everything from sports companies, to tourism services, to adult entertainment, to search services were attacked.

The teenager used various hacking tools widely available on the Internet, including software that helped him remain anonymous. Now and then, he left messages in the systems he hacked, or simply signed them with the hacker name ACK!3STX. Eventually, however, ACK!3STX’s anonymizing software failed him and his IP address was visible to BMI’s C4 (Cyber Crime Competence Centre) unit. C4 had been receiving multiple complaints from companies since the beginning of the year, so they started monitoring the hacker. At the end of last month, the unit traced his location to a residence in Lower Austria, and then obtained a search warrant.  What ever the investigation is still ongoing. Europol is trying to quantify his attacks both at home and abroad.