Operation Payback: Fourth hacker sentenced

In London today, an 18-year-old hacker received an 18-month youth rehabilitation order and a 60-hour unpaid work requirement for his involvement in "Operation Payback". According to the Guardian, the ruling judge said that the hacker would actually deserve a "substantial" custodial sentence, but that a non-custodial sentence was issued because the defendant was only 16 at the time of the offence. Apparently, the ruling also took into account psychiatric reports which described the defendant as "profoundly isolated" but about which the judge declined to go into further detail.

The prosecutor said that the defendant, who went by the online name of "Fennic", had boasted in internet chat rooms that he had played a senior role in the Anonymous hacker collective's operations. "Operation Payback" involved large-scale DDoS attacks on numerous payment processing services such as PayPal. Three other hackers have previously been sentenced in connection with the arrests and prosecutions that followed the attacks.