Hacker For Hire Is Sent To Prison For Sending Liberia Offline

Hacker For Hire Gets Prison Sentence

One of the more pervasive parts of the dark web is those who offer their hacking services for hire. The concept is quite simple. You pay them a fee and they will attempt to disrupt or completely take down a website. This can be for an individual or an entire company. Daniel Kaye (from the UK), however, having accepted a contract to disrupt an African phone company created something far more serious.

In a report via the BBC, his attempts to disrupt the company, however, resulted in the country of Liberia losing its internet. Yes, the whole country went down!

What Happened?

Daniel Kaye was hired by a staff member from Cellcom for $10,000 a month, he was asked to take down rival company Lonestar. Although it is at present unclear whether the employee was acting under the direction of Cellcom or as a ‘lone wolf’, the hacking attempt purchased was successful. It did, however, have much wider reaching consequences than I doubt any of the parties had considered. Namely, that it would result in Liberia losing their internet.

His attack, incidentally, was based on the relatively standard DDOS model of flooding a server with requests. Is it not, in addition, believed to have been his only offence.

Guilty!

Having pleaded guilty at Blackfriars Crown Court in London, Daniel Kaye has been sentenced to just under 3 years in prison. He was apprehended after already being suspected for the attack. This was, however, seemingly confirmed when he returned from a holiday in Africa carrying $10,000 on his person. For as talented as he was at hacking, it seems, however, that he was slightly less-talented at covering his tracks.

What do you think? Is this a fair sentence? In addition, do you worry about hackers for hire? – Let us know in the comments!