Canadian hacker 'Mafiaboy' breaks silence with book release

Fugitif · 1 Oct 2008

Infamous Canadian hacker 'Mafiaboy' breaks silence with book release

QUEBEC - The country's most notorious hacker, Mafiaboy, has written a tell-all book that is expected to hit bookshelves in the next few days.

For the first time, Mafiaboy is breaking his silence over his famous Internet attack in 2000 when he paralyzed the websites of CNN, Yahoo, eBay and other businesses for several hours. Convicted as a young offender, his name cannot be revealed.

The economic damages of the attack planned by the then-15-year-old high school student were estimated to be several million dollars.
After a two-month manhunt to nab the most wanted man in cyberspace, the RCMP and the FBI finally apprehended Mafiaboy at his parents' house during a late-night raid.

He could only be referred to by his online alias, Mafiaboy, since the law prevented the media from releasing the name of the teenage hacker.

He pleaded guilty to more than 50 charges and was sentenced to eight months in a youth detention centre and a year's probation.

In Mafiaboy: How I Cracked the Internet and Why It's Still Broken, the hacker, now 23, explains that he was not a computer whiz kid but that he quickly gained knowledge of computers and got to know other young hackers.

"After spending years trying to learn everything about how my PC worked, and enjoying every second of learning DOS commands and other technical information, I felt a strange kinship with these nameless, faceless programmers and online rebels," he writes in an excerpt made available by the publisher. "How did they create these programs? How many more of them were out there? How could I learn to write programs? To me, they were the coolest kids in cyberspace. I wanted to hang with them. I wanted to be a hacker."

The book is co-written with Montreal journalist Craig Silverman.

Publisher Penguin Books calls it "a cautionary tale that takes the reader through the history of hacking and how it has helped make the Internet the new frontier for crime in the 21st century."

According to Penguin, the book will be available on Oct. 11.

Mafiaboy wrote newspapers columns on computer security in the past few years and now works to help people and businesses protect themselves online.

Silverman says Mafiaboy contacted him to write the book and that his goal is to help raise awareness about online security.
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From:

http://www.canada.com/topics/news/story.html?id=b4566e56-5e57-4238-a802-f71587fb8f95

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Canadian hacker 'Mafiaboy' breaks silence with book release

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