Hacker gets 2 months' jail in first such case

Jun 25, 2010 ST

Hacker gets 2 months' jail in first such case

By Khushwant Singh

STUDENTS swotting for key examinations find their own ways of taking a break during those long hours. For Ng Han Xian, who was mugging for his O levels in 2005, hacking into other people's computers was it. He earned US$35,000 (S$48,800) in two months by breaking into as many as 30,000 computers - but this illegal accessing of computers belonging to other people has landed him a two-month jail term. In the first case of its kind, the Singaporean, now 21, commandeered control of a network of computers by hacking into them and installing software in them - software which earned him a cut from the websites visited on these computers, for example. He pleaded guilty. A district court heard that the police got wind of his antics in September 2005, when one of his victims Caine Poh Zhenlong, went to the police. He said he suspected Ng of conducting 'attacks' against his game server, which was hosting a community of computer gaming enthusiasts engaged in Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games such as Counterstrike. These attacks, called Distributed Denials of Service (DDOS), were causing crashes in servers belonging to Mr Poh and to others similarly attacked. And when they crashed, gamers had to look to join rival servers for their gaming fix. The server Ng set up, clear of crashes, thus took up the slack and grew in popularity and earnings. Ng fled to China in November 2007 and stayed there until his return in January this year, when he was arrested. Investigations have since revealed that he crashed rival servers by hosting a botnet. The word, an amalgamation of the words 'robot' and 'network', refers to a group of computers known as bots, which he had infected with a program to give him unauthorised access to them. These bots under his control linked up with rival servers simultaneously, causing them to crash from the overload. Ng's bots were also money spinners for him. Here is how: In August 2005, he signed up as an affiliate of Zangocash and Gammacash, adware companies which earn money by directing Internet traffic to online advertisements. For each piece of advertising software or adware program Ng surreptitiously installed in his bots to allow pop-up advertisements in them, he received a cut from the adware firms. He also received a fee from every website the computers in his botnet visited. Ng told police that by September 2005, he had made close to US$35,000. He could just have been fined, but District Judge Roy Neighbour said 'the threshold for a custodial sentence had been breached'. Ng could have been jailed up to two years and fined up to $5,000. Deputy Public Prosecutor Serene Seet told the court that Ng was a member of online hacking forums. In 2004, a foreign hacker named in court papers only as 'Thom-' helped him start a botnet. None of Ng's family members was in court or at home when The Straits Times called at their second-storey four-room flat in Tampines Street 83. Neighbours said he kept to himself and was always seen with a laptop. Polytechnic design student Muhd Sirajudin Sulaiman, 17, who lives a floor below the Ngs, said: 'I tried talking to him once, but he appeared uncomfortable. He was the quiet type and was always alone. Maybe the laptop was all the company he wanted.'