MafiaBoy :)
The 16-year-old is charged with the cyber equivalent of breaking and entering in assaults last winter that shut down sites operated by Yahoo, eBay, CNN and E-Trade.
The attacks, in which the Web sites were overloaded with requests from supercomputers infected with a program planted by a hacker, affected millions of Internet users worldwide.
If convicted, prosecutors say, Mafiaboy -- whose name is being withheld because he is a juvenile -- could face up to two years confinement in a youth center, $1,000 in fines and up to 240 hours of community service.
Prosecutors are willing to consider a plea agreement, but only if it includes some confinement.
Absolutely not, says the teen's attorney, who vows that if prosecutors stick to that position, they'll be sorry.
Yan Romanowski says his client is bracing for a protracted trial, lasting four to six months, during which the defense will demand that the government show the computer program that brought the Internet giants to their knees.
Internet security experts are calling the strategy blackmail, and prosecutors say they do not believe that publicizing the program, which Mafiaboy allegedly found on the Internet, would be necessary.
Nevertheless, Romanowski, in a likely attempt to gain leverage in plea-bargain talks, is playing hardball. The lawyer plans to challenge the legality of wiretaps that allowed Royal Canadian Mounted Police to collect 40 days of telephone conversations, during which the teenager is alleged to have bragged about his exploits behind the keyboard.
The wiretaps were planted after authorities traced computer fingerprints left on one supercomputer used in the attacks back to Mafiaboy. If that evidence is eliminated, Romanowski says, the whole case gets kicked.
If the evidence stands, as prosecutor Louis Miville-Deschenes expects, the defense envisions a courtroom drama that will require some of the biggest players in electronic commerce to testify as embarrassed victims of a boy's mischief. This is not an open-and-closed case by any means, Romanowski says.
Perhaps, but the lawyer's client might have not have helped matters when he was arrested last Friday and accused of violating the terms of his bail by repeatedly breaking school rules at Riverdale High. He remained in custody Monday night and was scheduled for a detention hearing today.
