A 17-year-old boy was sentenced to four years in prison for hacking into the airline system because he couldn't buy a ticket back home! He claimed that he was under great pressure due to the serious epidemic and his girlfriend's pregnancy

Mingmin from Aofei Temple
Quantum Bit Report | Public Account QbitAI

“If you can’t buy a ticket back home, you’ll paralyze the airline system!”

Unexpectedly, a 17-year-old boy (alias Xiao Chen) threatened the airline company and hired hackers to attack him because he could not buy a ticket to return home during the epidemic .

As a result, the aviation system serving more than 50 million users was shut down for 4 hours!

What kind of mysterious operation is this???

But unexpectedly, something even more shocking is yet to come...

According to Guangzhou Daily, Xiao Chen acted impulsively "due to the serious epidemic and the pressure from his girlfriend's pregnancy."

△ Source: Guangzhou Daily official Weibo

He had also taught himself IT before.

Xiao Chen dropped out of school after the third grade of elementary school to work. Since the age of 15, he has taught himself digital currency development, big data, blockchain technology, and artificial intelligence.

"Dropping out of school in third grade", "Taught myself IT", "17 years old", "Girlfriend is pregnant".

The sum of this information really shocked the netizens.

And as a result of this operation, he also "sent" himself to jail.

The Guangzhou Intermediate People's Court sentenced him to four years in prison ; the laptop computer used as the crime tool was confiscated.

Even the flight and control systems were paralyzed.

To talk about this matter itself, we have to start from the epidemic last year.

In June 2020, the person involved, Xiao Chen, was stranded in an epidemic-stricken area abroad due to the epidemic.

He felt extremely stressed as he couldn't buy a plane ticket because he had a fever and his girlfriend was pregnant.

So, in a fit of rage, he sent a threatening email to a domestic airline, and bought an attack package from an overseas website. He used DDoS and other attack methods to repeatedly and continuously attack the airline's ticket computer system.

This directly caused the airline's external service network to be completely paralyzed.

Ticketing business, WeChat live broadcast platform sales, and even airport passenger service, flight, and transportation control systems all collapsed.

And this process lasted for 4 hours .

Xiao Chen's actions not only caused huge economic losses to the airline, but also generated a lot of negative online public opinion.

A month later, Xiao Chen, who had already returned to China, was arrested by the public security authorities when he was going through the quarantine release procedures at a hotel in Guangzhou.

After being arrested, he truthfully confessed his crimes to the public prosecution agency and had no objection to the alleged facts and charges.

The Guangzhou Baiyun District People's Court held at first instance that Xiao Chen's behavior constituted the crime of destroying computer information systems .

Taking into account that he was over 16 years old but under 18 years old when he committed the crime, he should be given a mitigated or lighter punishment according to the law.

Finally, the Guangzhou Baiyun District People's Court sentenced Xiao Chen to four years in prison for the crime of destroying computer information systems ; the seized laptop computer used as the crime tool was confiscated.

After the first-instance verdict was announced, Xiao Chen was dissatisfied with the decision and filed an appeal.

After trial, the Guangzhou Intermediate People's Court ruled: the appeal was dismissed and the original judgment was upheld.

What is a DDoS attack?

At this point, Xiao Chen has been punished by law.

However, many people are curious about what the DDoS technology used in this attack is.

DDoS attack, the full name of which is Distributed denial of service attack , is translated as Distributed denial of service attack .

Its attack method is to send a large number of requests to the website server in a short period of time , consuming network bandwidth or system resources, causing the network or system to be overloaded and then paralyzed.

To put it in a more vivid way, it is like a group of people rushing into a store with malicious intent, but not buying anything and preventing people who originally wanted to shop from entering.

DDoS attack is a very common attack method. The technology is relatively mature and a related industrial chain has been formed. There are dedicated people to write source code and the hardware requirements are not high.

There was even news before: a young man born in the 1990s with a high school diploma taught himself DDoS attacks and became a hacker.

△ Photo source: Dayu News

However, this does not mean that you can learn DDoS attacks by yourself!

Just like what netizens said, doing illegal things will only make you suffer losses instead of being smart.

Reference links:
[1]https://m.mp.oeeee.com/a/BAAFRD000020210816567103.html
[2]https://cq.qq.com/a/20181121/012448.htm
[3]https://weibo.com/1887790981/KtKqa8ZuE?filter=hot&root_comment_id=0&type=comment