21-year-old Faces Jail for Forecasting DDoS Attacks against Government Sites

Hong Kong police arrested a man for using his Facebook account to boast intentions of launching DDoS attacks against government web sites.

Police handcuffed the 21-year-old on Friday and released him on bail, to return in October. According to The Register, Chinese media speculates the man has ties to the local Anonymous group after he told South China Morning Post that “many protesters are resorting to hacking because normal demonstrations are hampered by public order laws and the police.” Police nonetheless made no reference to the hacktivist organization.

Crime Ordinance, section 161 stipulates that it is a crime to seize control of a computer “with intent to commit an offence” and if judges rule him guilty the young man faces up to five years in jail.

Should this case be linked to the hacktivist group, their members may start talking about it on their social media accounts, but up until this point nothing was announced. In fact, the group`s @AnonymousAHK Twitter feed has not been updated since end of April when members announced their intent of going after hundreds of government and business websites; whereas their Facebook account has been used for the usual inflammatory posts.

Hong Kong businesses and government institutions are forced to deal with more traditional hazards such as extortion and blackmail when cybercriminals steal their IPs and threaten them with DDoS attacks. Only last month, police busted blackmailers who targeted some 16 gold and silver traders based in Hong Kong by threatening to destroy their online activities with distributed denial-of-service attacks.