A 23-year-old man from Utah was sentenced this week to 27 months in prison for a series of DDoS attacks that took down online gaming service providers like Sony’s PlayStation Network, Valve’s Steam, Microsoft’s Xbox, EA, Riot Games, Nintendo, Quake Live, DOTA2, and League of Legends servers, along with many others. Named Austin Thompson, but known online as DerpTrolling, the man is the first hacker who started a trend among other hackers and hacking crews — namely of launching DDoS attacks against gaming providers during Christmas, which they later justified using ridiculous reasons such as “to spoil everyone’s holiday,” “to make people spend time with their families,” or “for the lulz.”
