Anonymous hacker gets 10 years in prison for DDoS attacks on children's hospitals

[steven36]

After a house search, hacker tried to flee to Cuba in a boat but needed help and was rescued by a Disney cruise ship.

 

 

A Massachusetts man was sentenced today to ten years in prison for launching DDoS attacks on behalf of the Anonymous hacker collective against US children's hospitals in 2014

 

Martin Gottesfeld, 34, was also ordered to pay $443,000 in restitution for damages caused by his DDoS attacks, which he allegedly carried with the help of a botnet made up of over 40,000 internet routers.

 

The attacks were part of #OpJustina, a campaign of the Anonymous hacker collective, which Gottesfeld backed and was a primary force.

 

The campaign aimed to raise public interest in the case of Justina Pelletier, a young girl who was separated from her parents after a diagnosis made by Boston Children's Hospital medical staff.

 

Although the girl was eventually reunited with her parents a year later after it was revealed that doctors misdiagnosed her condition, at the time of the events in 2014, Gottesfeld decided to support her parents' case by launching DDoS attacks against the Wayside Youth and Family Support Network, a Framingham-based mental health counseling clinic where Pelletier was held, but also against Boston Children's Hospital and other Longwood Medical Area hospitals.

 

The attacks, described as huge at the time, knocked the Boston Children's Hospital offline for days, and authorities said they disrupted the hospital's day-to-day operations and its research capabilities.

Authorities eventually tracked Gottesfeld by a video he uploaded on YouTube, according to court documents. They searched his house but did not arrest him in 2014.

 

 

Gottesfeld tried to flee to Cuba in a rented boat, but the trip didn't go as planned. They were rescued from the Gulf of Mexico by a Disney ship that answered their SOS call and brought back to the US.

 

He was arrested in 2016 and tried to protest his prosecutor's assignment by entering a hunger strike. The prosecutor assigned to the case was the same who went after Internet activist Aaron Swartz in 2013 and hacker Jonathan James in 2008, both of whom committed suicide following what families described as overly aggressive prosecution tactics.

 

Gottesfeld was found guilty in August 2018 of one count of conspiracy to damage protected computers and one count of damaging protected computers. He faced up to five years in prison for the conspiracy charge and another ten years for the count of damaging protected computers.

 

Dana Gottesfeld, the suspect's wife, told ZDNet in an email the sentence was "incredibly harsh and way more than people usually get for CFAA violations."

 

"It's also a really stark contrast that Marty got 10 years and Boston Children's Hospital, who literally abused a child, are protected from any kind of accountability," she added.

 

Mrs. Gottesfeld, who has been married to Mr. Gottesfeld for three years, says they plan to file an appeal. She also showed her dissatisfaction toward the court dismissing a 690-page affidavit listing the judge's alleged conflict of interests in the matter of this case.

 

A much more in-depth look at the Gottesfeld case is available in this reporter's previous coverage for Bleeping Computer.

 

Article updated shortly after publication with Mrs. Gottesfeld's comments.

 

Source

 

[BioHazard]

he sure deserved it, if I was the judge I would've have sentence to 20 years   

[nIGHT]

3 minutes ago, BioHazard said:

he sure deserved it, if I was the judge I would've have sentence to 20 years   

What if he is your own brother? Other may not know it but would you still give him 20 or even convict him?
Or let us going to make things much worse:
What if this is your brother-in-law? Per year sentence would also mean a year of no sex not even mouth or hand service?
Other may not know it but would you still give him 20 or even convict him?

[BioHazard]

7 minutes ago, nIGHT said:

What if he is your own brother? Other may not know it but would you still give him 20 or even convict him?
Or let us going to make things much worse:
What if this is your brother-in-law? Per year sentence would also mean a year of no sex not even mouth or hand service?
Other may not know it but would you still give him 20 or even convict him?

I don't care who he or she is for hacking a children hospital require stiff sentence  

[nIGHT]

15 minutes ago, BioHazard said:

I don't care who he or she is for hacking a children hospital require stiff sentence  

You're  a tough guy then, a man with principles or probably a self righteous man.
If I am a demon then I already failed.
I was supposed to demonstrate that sometimes it is better said than done.
It is easier for us to say he deserves it but when this person is our kin then things gets tough.
I wonder how his family felt thinking he got 10 years for just doing stupid things on the internet.
Must be a long discussion and great disappointment.
 

[plb4333]

Very silly argument. Laws aren't meant to be flexible to allow for 'next of Kin' consequences. This is way too far off base for what laws are. Prices are paid, and preset for amounts of punishment, and whether a family is devastated or not, justice is served well, and the devastation would only show: 'Crime Does NOT Pay' period..Get off your sympathy characterizations to shape laws.

[nIGHT]

On 1/11/2019 at 2:34 PM, nIGHT said:

I wonder how his family felt thinking he got 10 years for just doing stupid things on the internet.
Must be a long discussion and great disappointment.
 

These two sentences did not say anything to influence the law to consider the welfare of the next of kin of the defendant.
It is just a thought of how they possibly dealt with it.
And... you just mixed them all up.
Anyway, though everyone is entitled to have their own opinion on the matter and I respect them to have one,
I need to elaborate mine since you have a different interpretation and views from what I posted above.

 

On 1/12/2019 at 4:41 PM, plb4333 said:

Very silly argument. Laws aren't meant to be flexible to allow for 'next of Kin' consequences. This is way too far off base for what laws are. Prices are paid, and preset for amounts of punishment, and whether a family is devastated or not, justice is served well, and the devastation would only show: 'Crime Does NOT Pay' period..Get off your sympathy characterizations to shape laws.

Let's say you are a policeman. Your only son/grandson just killed a man and from the looks of it surely is a premeditated crime. 
From your own judgement he will certainly get a death penalty as this is a first degree murder.
You arrive at the crime scene since he ask for your help.
He confess his premeditated crime to you. He planned it out. The problem is he only planned killing him and did not consider what to do after he killed him.
There are only two of you there. There are no witnesses. Will you arrest your son/grandson even if the chances of him not getting a death penalty is way too low, or
will you help cover for his crime, whether dispose the body or just let him off and you will destroy any possible evidence?

I was unfortunate to live in such a lawless place where the only laws being implemented are the ones made by the one controlling the area and not by the laws made by reasonable men (the constitution).
He is the judge, jury and also the executioner at the same time. (Please do not argue with me about this without reading below)
There are still people like these today. An example is the incumbent president of the Ph1l1,pp1nes and the king of Thailand.
I understand the point you are making there. The law does not include the consideration of the welfare of its next of kin when convicting someone.

That is the ideal scenario, but in a country were almost all the judges, attorney are related in some other way, this is almost an inevitable scenario.
But that is not the point here but "it is when the time comes you judge your 'own'."

The biggest example for this is the son of the incumbent president of the Ph1l1,pp1nes whom is accused of being a drug lord decades ago until just a year ago where he allegedly imported millions amount worth of drugs. Actually, the president's son-in-law, who also happens to be an attorney, is allegedly involved too. And this "son-in-law" is the nephew of the head of the ombudsman.
[reference Ph1l1,ppine president's son denies links to $125-million drug shipment ...]
The president's policy is to kill all drug users, pushers, and drug lords even if they were still a "suspect" using his "own death squad". 

(Crazy place to be visiting.)
Will he kill his own son himself, if he himself discovers that his son is really a drug lord? This is what I am trying to point here.
They were acquitted in the end according to the news. But the conviction is still going as new evidences surface.
The president vows retribution on the senator who started the allegations and he did almost end up in jail.

It's so easy for others to judge and convict one strange person who committed a crime to an overkill sentence/punishment. 
Let say your son/grandson's crime is not first degree murder but the same as this guy on the topic, just "DDosing", and he gets a death penalty for that crime only. Too much? This is my other point too. "Too much punishment for just such crime".
In other countries, you could be jailed indefinitely, get a life sentence, or death penalty just for saying something "not good" about the leader of that country.
[Reference: Man jailed for 30 years in Thailand for insulting the monarchy on ... he got 60 years but halves since he pleaded guilty]
[Reference: Swiss man jailed for 10 years for defacing Thai king's image...this man got 75 years but was reduced to 10 due to pleading guilty]
[Reference: Defaming a dog: The ways to get arrested for lese-majeste in Thailand ... this he got 15 years]
Who cares, right? They deserve it and punishment should be tripled instead, right? Justice served for the people of that country and the convicted!
You do not know them anyway. It would be unfortunate for you if the Swiss man is your own brother/son/grandson.
I wonder how you feel when others say your own brother/son/grandson should be punished twice and severely for only such petty crimes.
Ch1n@ is now issuing a death penalty only for all Canadians even just for trivial offense/petty crimes, and some members here are Canadians.
Canadians, don't come here in Ch1n@, You might end up regretting it, no matter if you did nothing wrong.

I do not live there in the USA so your laws and norms are different from ours. We think differently from you.
I treat everyone as my brothers and sisters unlike some which needed to have a direct close relationship with them.
I mostly put myself in the shoe of the suspect, the victim, suspect's next of kin and the victim's next of kin.

The only people whom this arguments do not apply are those with strong principles or self righteous ones.
Like those who hated rapist or pedophiles, surely they will have their own justification of the crimes committed.
Or, when the ones affected are children or women.

 

Note: All my knowledge came from reading articles on the internet. I have no personal knowledge or know anyone mentioned in this comment but as a reference from being in the news only. I only mentioned what the news are saying. I do not bear hatred nor have any ill will against anyone mentioned in this post. I do not live in planet Earth and please do not hunt me. I am currently on my way to some other galaxy.