Hackers rally around Dutch WikiLeaks DDoS suspect
Members of RevSpace, a hacker collective in The Hague want to teach "Jeroenz0r," currently in custody for cyberattacks against Mastercard and Visa, a lesson or two to make him a real hacker. That is, an ethical hacker.
The High Tech Crime Unit of the Dutch National police arrested the 16-year-old boy and confiscated his computer equipment on Wednesday night. He is accused of being a driving force behind the distributed DDoS (denial-of-service) attacks against the websites of Mastercard and Visa earlier this week.
The suspect, who sports the online nickname "Jeroenz0r," is a regular on the IRC chat channels of the local hacker club in The Hague called Revelation Space. Some of its members know the boy. "What he has done is of course out of the question," says Koen Martens, head of Revspace in an interview with Webwereld, a Dutch IDG publication.
DDoS is not hacking Martens emphasized that a DDoS attack has nothing to do with real hacking and shouldn't be confused with it. But the RevSpace members, who pride themselves on being benevolent white-hat hackers, see no reason to oust the boy. Quite the contrary. "It's obvious that we will have to guide him. We will help him learn what ethical hacking really means and to point out what is inadmissible and wrong," says Martens.
According to Martens, it is important to keep the door open and give the boy a chance to develop in a positive way. "Hopefully, people will not abandon him," he said.
Martens plans to set up a course to prevent kids from "crossing the line" in cyberspace. "We are also a role model," he argued. "We can be more helpful than scolding parents who might have no idea about technology and computers."
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4rm4g3dd0n 13 years ago
Jeroenz0r maybe a scapegoat if you ask me i mean if you have the knowledge for such an attack I would be pretty sure you would also have the knowledge not to carry it out on your home computer….. hell you can get a Wi-Fi connection anywhere these days cough…cough… more government BS ––42––
The-Scarecrow 13 years ago
I feel that the stupidest thing this kid did was did the attack from his home computer as 4rm4g3dd0n said. If there was a ethical time to hack a major website this year it would have been those targets at that time, As lame as DDoS is.
Our Australian Prim minister said that "I absolutely condemn the placement of this information on the Wikileaks website. It's a grossly irresponsible thing to do and an illegal thing to do."
It was then our attorney general stepped in and said. "It is the reason why young Australians have died face down in the mud over the centuries to ensure that we have a system of justice where no officer of the political class determines their guilt or innocence"
So why are these websites withholding money from wikileaks? they got what they deserved.