Indian teen arrested in US for cyber attack choking 911 lines
By Prempal Singh
An Indian teenager has recently been arrested in the US for carrying out a cyber-attack that swamped Arizona’s emergency services with several bogus calls, an event he claimed was certainly a non-harmful joke removed wrong. Meet Kumar Hiteshbhai Desai was taken into guardianship following the Surprise Police Division, Arizona, notified the Sheriff’s Office of more than 100 hang-up 911 phone calls.
The Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office arrested the 18-year-old, accusing him of transporting out a cyber-attack on the 911 system, relating to a Sheriff’s Workplace statement. Desai was reserved into a Maricopa Region jail on suspicion of three counts of computer tampering.
Interference with critical infrastructure could have interrupted the 911 system in the Phoenix area and potentially more states, The Arizona Republic reported. Investigators tracked the calls and uncovered they descends from a link posted to Tweets, in line with the statement.
The hyperlink was going to a site named “Meet Desai” and its domain was hosted out of San Francisco. If the hyperlink was clicked, it continuously called 911 and would not let the unknown caller hang up the phone. Peoria police and the MCSO also received a huge number of phone calls, and the amount had the potential to shut down 911 service across Maricopa County, the Sheriff’s Workplace said. MCSO detectives determined ‘Meet’ and took him in for questioning previous Wednesday.
“Meet claims that his intention was to make a non-harmful, but annoying bug that this individual believed was ‘funny’, ” the Sheriff’s Office declaration said.
Desai told researchers that having been contacted by an online good friend with a bug. Desai then tweaked the insect so it would add pop-ups, prompts to open up e-mail applications and service of programmed telephone dialing on iOS devices, all via coding that Desai wrote himself.
Desai informed sheriff’s detectives that this individual was enthusiastic about programs, insects, and viruses that this individual could manipulate and change. Desai said Apple Incorporation., the hardware and software company, would pay and credit him for finding such bugs and malware. The MCSO cyber offenses unit executed research online warrant and seized multiple items at Desai’s home that will be forensically examined, the Sheriff’s Business office said.
Source: DNAIndia