08 February 2019

A British court has jailed a cyber criminal who ended up knocking Liberia offline in 2016 (see News, Dec 2016-Jan 2017 issue).

30-year-old Daniel Kaye was sentenced to 32 months in prison by a court in London earlier in January 2019.

According to reports, the self-taught cyber criminal began selling his hacking skills on the dark web. The court heard how, in 2015, Kaye was hired by someone working for Liberian telco Cellcom to launch a DDoS attack on rival firm Lonestar. There is no suggestion that Cellcom was aware of this and that the employee was therefore working on his or her own.

Lawyers said Kaye was offered up to USD10,000 a month to destroy Lonestar using a botnet that he built which exploited Mirai malware. Working covertly out of Cyprus, in November 2016 Kaye used his mobile to launch the DDoS and  overwhelm Lonestar’s systems.

Initially, Liberia’s mobile phone users began to see their devices go offline. But Kaye had sent so much traffic that the country’s entire internet system became clogged and inadvertently ended up knocking Liberia offline.

Kaye was suspected of being behind the attack and was also thought to be behind DDoS attacks on three British banks. He was arrested after returning to the UK following a holiday in February 2017. Authorities say Kaye was carrying USD10,000 which was part of the payments received for the Lonestar attack.