Eric Rosol is not a big-time hacker. However, the Wisconsin man did participate in the 2011 distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack that Anonymous unleashed on Koch Industries — for one whole minute. And for that one minute of his life, a judge just decided, Rosol must pay a $US183,000 fine.
Oh, and two years probation.
But $US183,000 — holy shit! — for running a piece of software on a computer for 60 whole seconds?! That amounts to $US3050 per second of very small-time hacking. (That is, if you could even call a DDoS attack a form of hacking.) By comparison, the attack supposedly cost Koch Industries less than $US5000 in damages, though the company says they spent $US183,000 to hire consults to protect its websites. That’s where the $US183,000 fine figure comes from.
This feels a little unfair. Nobody’s trying to say that what Rosol did was right. He pleaded guilty to the misdemeanour count of accessing a protected computer and probably expected a slap on the wrist because he accessed that computer for less than the span of a commercial break. But you don’t need to look further than this to see why activists say that hackers laws are entirely too harsh in this country. [Naked Security]
Picture: Getty