DerpTrolling in prison for DDoS attacks

At the end of 2013, with a series of targeted DDoS assaults, it brought the servers of some of the most significant gaming systems to their knees, and now they will have to serve their sentence. DerpTrolling, born Austin Thompson, is a Utah-based 23-year-old US resident, held responsible for nearly six-year-old actions.

DerpTrolling, DDoS attacks PlayStation Network (Sony), Steam (Valve), Xbox (Microsoft), League of Legends (Riot Games), Nintendo, Quake Live I d Software), Dota 2 (Valve) and many others have been impacted. In the holiday season, making internet video games services unusable has since become a kind of tradition. Actions justified by motivations such as "to destroy the holidays of everyone," "to encourage individuals to spend time with families" or merely "for pleasure."

The modus operandi of DerpTrolling initially involved a post on Twitter (the account still appears to be active) in which requests about the platforms to be hit were accepted, with regular updates on the outcome of the actions.

DerpTrolling's intense activity between December 2013 and January 2014 caused some organizations to emulate their achievements, always during the Christmas season: it dropped to Lizard Squad in December 2014, Phantom Squad in 2015 and RIU Star Patrol in 2016. From 2017 on, the attacks seem to have become less severe, perhaps also thanks to the services ' new and more efficient protection systems.

Thompson's arrest dates back to 2014, the November sentence of condemnation last year, but only today an article appearing on the pages of the ZDNet website has made the case-related documents public. The manager is called to pay $95,000 in Daybreak Games coffers, a California software company former subsidiary of Sony Online Entertainment, in relation to 27 months imprisonment (he will be in jail from August).