Hacker Mafiaboy 'deserves' jail term

Notorious hacker Mafiaboy, whose disruptive attacks have been well publicised by the media, should do at least five months in prison, a social worker said yesterday.

The youth, who cannot be named for legal reasons, is now 16 and avoided a jail sentence by promising to get a full time job. He was initially arrested in April last year and found guilty of carrying out denial of service attacks on numerous websites including Amazon, eBay and Yahoo.

Although re-arrested for breaking bail terms, the judge has been lenient in allowing him to remain free. Mafiaboy could have faced a two-year sentence in a juvenile detention centre.

But at the hacker's hearing this week in Canada, a social worker testified that Mafiaboy should serve at least five months behind bars because he shows no remorse for his actions.

Court appointed social worker Harry Chung said that this lack of remorse suggested that Mafiaboy would get involved in illegal hacking activities again.

Chung said he did not believe Mafiaboy's defence that he was simply testing computer security on the affected websites, claiming that the complexity and length of the attacks suggested a more malicious motive.