The young Finnish man born in 1998 concocted a malicious program, infected thousands of users with it and utilized their computers for cyber-attacks on the Nordic country's most important agencies, the Finnish daily Ilta-Sanomat reported.
On YouTube, the man advertised a self-made tool for downloading games from the Internet, which was subsequently installed by over 1,500 users. However, the gizmo turned out to be a malicious program, with the help of which he proceeded to block the work of government websites and jeopardized the information security and activities of state officials, as well as citizens' data at the disposal of the authorities, the court conclusion said.
At the end of March, the attacker was briefly arrested, yet went on with the cyber-attacks after his release. Using another malicious program, he hacked yet another 3,500 computers, effectively allowing third parties to use his botnet in cyber-attacks. The identities of people engaged in the attacks remain as yet unknown.
According to Ilta-Sanomat, the hacker also gained access to some 50 work computers, which allowed him to see users' pin codes, passwords and other sensitive data.
A much milder than expected punishment of one year's conditional sentence and a compensation of €3,400 (roughly $4,000) was given due to the fact that the culprit confessed in his crimes.
The sentence was criticized as far too lenient by experts on cybercrime as having little to no deterring effect on other hackers.
