Two years' detention for UK teenager who
'cyberterrorised' US officials
Kane
Gamble, 18, targeted CIA and FBI chiefs from Leicestershire housing estate
Gamble
used a TV in the home of the homeland security chief Jeh Johnson to post the
message: ‘I own you.’ Photograph: Victoria Jones/PA
A teenager who rocked the US intelligence
community when he tricked his way into top officials’ accounts in a campaign of
“cyberterrorism” has been locked up for two years.
Kane Gamble, 18, founder of Crackas With
Attitude (CWA), admitted targeting high-profile figures such as the then CIA
chief, John Brennan, and his wife, and the FBI deputy director, Mark Giuliano,
from his family home on a Leicestershire housing estate.
Between June 2015 and February 2016, he
accessed email and phone accounts to get his hands on “extremely sensitive”
documents on military and intelligence operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, the
Old Bailey was told.
Mr Justice Haddon-Cave handed him a deterrent
sentence of two years in youth detention.
He said Gamble had “revelled” in the attacks,
adding: “This was an extremely nasty campaign of politically motivated
cyberterrorism. The victims would have felt seriously violated.”
Gamble had bragged at one point: “This is so
serious I’m fucking shaking. This has to be the biggest hack ever.”
He impersonated his victims and tricked call
centres at communications firms Comcast and Verizon into divulging confidential
information.
After targeting Brennan and his wife, Kathy,
Gamble posted anonymously on Twitter saying: “CIA set your game up homies. We
own everything. #freepalestine #CWA.” Other victims working under President
Barack Obama included James Clapper, the director of national intelligence; the
deputy national security adviser Avril Haines; the senior science and
technology adviser John Holdren; the secretary of homeland security, Jeh
Johnson, and FBI special agent Amy Hess.
Gamble taunted them, using a TV in Johnson’s
family home to post the message: “I own you.”
He boasted about calling him, saying he had
“shreked him”.
He left a disturbing voicemail message for
Johnson’s wife, Susan DiMarco, asking: “Hi spooky, am I scaring you?”
Giuliano’s passwords were reset and he and his
family were bombarded with phone calls, resulting in them getting police
protection.
Gamble leaked some of the information he
gathered using various websites including WikiLeaks.
Holdren was harassed in a “swat” attack, when
a hoax call was made to local police resulting in officers going to his home.
Gamble, who was aged 15 and 16 at the time,
was supported by his mother when he appeared at the Old Bailey.
Prosecutor John Lloyd-Jones QC said
aggravating features included the “invasion” of victims’ professional and
private lives as well as their families.
He said: “So many of the American witnesses
attest to a drop in confidence in the use of portals, many of the agencies
withdrawing their contributions, reducing the effectiveness in the wider law
enforcement community in America.”
William Harbage QC, mitigating, said Gamble
had a naive response to what he read about in online chat rooms.
“In a naive, immature and childish way, he
thought he could do something about it, he could make a nuisance of himself by
targeting people in America and that would somehow get them to change US policy
as a result of what he was doing from his bedroom.”
He said Gamble never meant to “harm and
traumatise people on an individual basis”.
Harbage added: “When members of the families
were brought into it, he did not think through the consequences. The thought
seems to have been: ‘I want to grab attention of the US government and getting
the families involved is some way that will grab attention even more.’”
Harbage argued for a suspended sentence,
saying Gamble was due to sit GCSEs in June and hoped to read computer studies
at university and pursue a “useful” career.
Gamble, of Coalville, had pleaded guilty to
eight charges of performing a function with intent to secure unauthorised
access to computers and two charges of unauthorised modification of computer
material.
The judge also ordered the seizure of Gamble’s
computers.
Sources : https://www.theguardian.com/international
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Informasi