Lizard Squad Hacker Found Guilty, Receives Two-Year Suspension

By Staff Reporter | Jul 09, 2015 09:00 AM EDT

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Julius "zeekill" Kivimaki has been found guilty of 50,700 cybercrimes in Finland in a report by Finnish newspaper Kaleva. Kivimaki is a member of the notorious hackers calling themselves the Lizard Squad, who were responsible for hacking into the PlayStation Network (PSN) and Xbox Live gaming services last year, sending out a distributed-denial-of-service (DDoS) attack.

Kivimaki was also the group's spokesman on interviews with Sky News. The Lizard Squad took down PSN and Xbox Live by using thousands of hacked home Internet Routers, according to NDTV Gadgets.

Kivimaki however, will not do time. Instead, he received a two-year suspended jail sentence and his Internet activity under close monitor by the Finnish authorities.

While netizens expressed disgust and disappointment, the Lizard Squad was having the time of their lives on their Twitter account, reveling at the lenient sentence through a series of tweets, one of which even said that people who want them to rot in prison do not understand that they (Squad) have free passes.

The Age wrote that, like the United States, the Finnish legal system doesn't seem to know what to do with minors who are guilty of cybercrimes. The FBI has been investigating young men of Kivimaki's age who are responsible for similar cases of cybercrimes. Unfortunately, these young people up to this day remain scot-free.

Lance James, former head of cyber intelligence for Deloitte and a security researcher followed Kivimaki's case and expressed disappointment at the court's decision considering the weight and vastness of the crimes.

John Smedley, former Sony executive and now CEO of Daybreak also wasn't happy by the judgment. In a series of tweets posted by SegmentNext, he expressed his anger and in the same breath said that Kivimaki's parents should be held accountable for their child's actions.

Kivimaki was also responsible for a bomb threat last summer, which caused Smedley's flight to make an emergency landing due to security concerns.

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