Call of Duty DDoS attack police arrest teen

A 17-year-old from Manchester has been arrested by the Metropolitan Police's e-crime unit (PCeU) on suspicion of being behind a denial of service attack against the online game Call of Duty. The teenager was arrested in the Beswick area of Manchester early on Thursday morning. He is suspected of involvement in denial of …

[Doug Glass]

Suicide Prevention

Kept him from leaping from his basement window.

[Kurt Goodliff]

Implications on other ddos'

Hmm what does this mean for the wikileaks friends ddosing opposing sites?

17? this is an 18+ game, but I guess is he was 6 months older he'd probably have done the same thing.

I blame the parents :P

[ElReg!comments!Pierre]

Implications for other DDOS

Reports are a bit hazy but from my understanding they got the guy selling the attack software -from the post he used to advertise it, which is easy- and not the actual attackers -from the connection logs, which would have been tremendously more difficult- so no parallel can be made with other attacks. This certainly doesn't suggest that the plods can trace DDOSers (although I bet they deliberately released a vague story in order to instill unjustified fear in the hearts of script kiddies).

[Anonymous Coward]

@Implications for other DDOS

"so no parallel can be made with other attacks."

Except that it does show that plod *can* at least be bothered to collar someone for interfering with the operation of a game, so they're not necessarily all busy chasing high-level terrorism and organised crime.

[Luki79uk]

17 years old?

he shouldn't even be playing a 18+ rated game - jail him

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh

The reason he's not supposed to be playing an 18+ rated game is that he's not yet considered fully responsible for his actions.

You mean, "jail his parents".

[ratfox]

DDoSing for better scores??

This is a new low.

[matt 115]

old

I remember people doing this in ultima online nearly 10 years ago

People regularly shared ICQ numbers, from that you could get their IP

[Mike Hanna]

Beswick

Knowing how much of a shit hole Beswick is, if I lived there I'd be doing all I could to get into prison as well...

[asdf]

lol nice fyi

Nice to see the Brits can be as judgmental about peoples location as us Yanks. No really Mississippi is the mobile home capital of the world - www.drbukk.com/gmhom/park.html

[Anonymous Coward]

Online

Is CoD still P2P gamining like the lame IWNet for Modern Warfare 2?

If so and if you are the host is it against the law to DDoS yourself?

[Anonymous Coward]

No

Back to persistant servers thank Jehova. The hackfest that MW2 became is appauling and Activision should be ashamed they have let one of their flagship titles become such a state.

[Spearchucker Jones]

Lol :-)

I see where you're going with this ;-)

[matt 115]

dedicated

they have official dedicated serv er - i think from approved hosts only

[The main man]

I am sure...

He is a supporter of Wikileaks and a member of 4chan

[Thomas 4]

Reminds me of something I read in the Evening Standard today

It describes 4chan as being "the home of harmless internet jokes such as Rickrolling". Are we talking about the same fetid internet sewer here?

[Destroy All Monsters]

How the hell...

Do you become "member of 4chan"?

Back to /b/ with you.

[Semihere]

Precursor?

DI Paul Hoare of the PCeU ... also said: "This type of crime can often be the precursor to further offending in more traditional areas of online crime."

Did he honestly try to say that DDoS attacks are a 'gateway' crime? ROFL

[blackworx]

Offences

"offences against the computer misuse act"

Shirley that should be "offences under the computer misuse act"?

[Mike Hunt 1]

@ blackworx

It is, and don't call me Shirley (homage to Leslie Nielsen)

[Inachu]

HOLY CRAP MOTHER OF GOD! PLEASE........

The kid just wanted high score.... jeeeez.......

If anything he may have used it against botters and wall hacks which means yes he could have used it to cheat but it can be used to boot the cheaters. This program is like a knife.

So it depends on how you use it.

[chubbymike]

So that was what...

...he was on about. I kept getting messages from some child on MW2 accusing me of boosting and I had no idea what he was on about. So, I am so good he thinks I cheat? Excellent :P

[Anonymous Coward]

Erm.... "Call of Duty DDoS attack police arrest teen"

Gah. This headline had even me turning into the grammar police (pun intended I guess):

"Call of Duty DDoS attack police arrest teen"

So the police, who were doing a COD DDos Attack, arrested a teen... that would have been a much more interesting story! :)

[Charlie 3]

Poor information :(

I appologise for whining, but technical details seem to be very thin on the ground here, and I'm rather confused about a few points...

"Distributed denial of service attacks are currently being used against the websites of Sarah Palin, Mastercard and other perceived enemies of Wikileaks and Julian Assange"

Is this at all relevant?

The investigation by PCeU found the DDoS attack was made using a malicious program called "Phenom Booter".

If it was launched using off-the-shelf software, surely this make it a single-homed DoS attack, not a DDoS?

"Police found the malware being offered for sale on a web forum for Call of Duty players to allow them to attack other players of the game and thereby improve their own scores."

Is this illegal?

Police tracked the server to the UK and finally via its IP number to Greater Manchester.

What server?!

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would I want a title?

'This type of crime can often be the precursor to further offending in more traditional areas of online crime'

Where is the empirical evidence that supports this assertion? I would love to see it.

[Znort666]

I can see it now,

next on Jeremy Kyle, Elaine talks about how her son, Jayzee, has turned from a small time DDoS user to a full-time virus writer.

Elaine: You know Jeremy, people said it was a gateway to harder, more dangerous things but i never believed them.

*Cue video of kid in bedroom on CoD*

[Anomalous Cowturd]

Ban keyboards for under eighteens.

There, solved that one for you.

NEXT!

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree

Teens shouldn't be allowed a full Qwerty - it's wasted on them anyway. Give them a crappy phone-style alpha-numeric keypad which may help them to improve their typing. At least they'll have an excuse for all that ridiculous txt spk on forums where time-constraints and message length restrictions don't exist.

[There's a bee in my bot net]

Its just a game right?

Wow - sounds like some people are taking their on-line gaming a little too seriously...

In the days of Quake and Team Fortress, if someone was cheating then they became the focus of everyone's attention and got hounded out of the game. If the server was slow or laggy, you found another one or started your own.

[Winkypop]

When I were a lad....

....and I got caught cheating at a game, it was a whack behind the ears and instant bed-time.

I can't recall plod ever making an appearance, but then, I was in my room.