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Cybercriminal sentenced
for disrupting Liberian
telecoms provider
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A
British cybercriminal has been
sentenced to two years and eight
months for conducting attacks that
disrupted a Liberian telecommunications
provider, resulting in losses estimated at tens
of millions of US dollars. infected Dahua security cameras, to carry
out consistent attacks on Lonestar. customers in November 2016 and received a
suspended sentence.
In November 2016, the traffic from Kaye’s
botnet was so high in volume that it disabled
Internet access across Liberia. Kaye was returned to the UK on a second
European Arrest Warrant in August 2017.
Daniel Kaye, from Egham, Surrey, pleaded
guilty last month to creating and using a
botnet and possessing criminal property.
He was jailed at Blackfriars Crown Court
following an investigation led by the NCA’s
National Cyber Crime Unit (NCCU). The attacks had a direct and significant
impact on Lonestar’s ability to provide
services to its customers, resulting in revenue
loss of tens of millions in US dollars as
customers left the network.
Kaye, who was living in Peyia, Cyprus,
began carrying out intermittent Distributed
Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks on the
Liberian telecommunications provider
Lonestar MTN in October 2015 using
rented botnets and stressors.
The 30-year-old expert hacker was hired by
a senior official at Cellcom, a rival Liberian
network provider, and paid a monthly retainer.
From September 2016, Kaye used his own
Mirai botnet, made up of a network of
Remedial action taken by Lonestar to prevent
the attacks incurred at around US$600,000.
A European Arrest Warrant was issued for Kaye
and when he returned to the UK in February
2017, he was arrested by NCA officers.
His laptop, mobile and passport were seized,
as well as US$10,000 in US$100 bills found
in his suitcase.
He was subsequently extradited to
Germany where he admitted attacks on
Deutsche Telekom that affected one million
NCA Specials contributed hours of their time
to the investigation, providing technical
expertise to NCCU officers and assisting with
in-depth reviews of material.
The Shadowserver Foundation also assisted
the investigation by providing sinkholing
traffic from the botnet.
Mike Hulett, Head of Operations at the
NCCU, said: “Daniel Kaye was operating as a
highly skilled and capable hacker-for-hire.
“His activities inflicted substantial damage
on numerous businesses in countries around
the world, demonstrating the borderless
nature of cybercrime.
“The victims in this instance suffered
losses of tens of millions of dollars and
had to spend a large amount on
mitigating action.
“Working in collaboration with international
law enforcement partners played a key role
in bringing Daniel Kaye to justice.”
Russell Tyner, from the CPS, added:
“Kaye was a talented and sophisticated
cybercriminal who created one of the world’s
largest networks of compromised computers
which he then made available to other
cybercriminals with no consideration as to
the damage it would cause.
“The CPS and the NCA, together with
the authorities in Germany and Cyprus,
worked closely together in order to bring
him to justice.” n
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