Anonymous 2010 PayPal CyberAttackers Plead Guilty For Reduced Sentences

In late 2010, a group of Anonymous hacktivists fired the Low Orbit Ion Cannon (otherwise known as the hacker group's distributed denial of service, or DDoS, attack) at PayPal as part of "Operation Payback." On Thursday, 13 defendants who had been charged with that PayPal attack pleaded guilty in a California federal court.

"Operation Payback," at least in December of 2010, was a response to financial companies who had frozen or otherwise blocked digital avenues of donation to WikiLeaks, which, at the time, was under increasing pressure from the U.S. and other governments for publishing secret diplomatic cables. PayPal, along with others like BankAmerica, MasterCard, and Visa, was the chief target for these Anonymous-affiliated hackers.

Most members of the group of thirteen, according to a Reuters report, were charged with felonies, and pleaded guilty, according to a Friday announcement by the U.S. Attorney's Office in San Francisco. Ten pleaded guilty to a felony charge and three pleaded to misdemeanors, but the felony charges will be allowed to change to a misdemeanor next year if the defendants do not violate the terms of the plea deal before sentencing.

The charges for most included a felony count under the increasingly controversial Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (FCAA) for  "intentional damage to a protected computer," which carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison or a quarter-million dollar fine, or "conspiracy," which carries a five-year sentence and the same fine, according to the Daily Beast's in-depth report.

Under the plea deal, the defendants have one year to follow the terms of the plea deal, which include not engaging in any new (significant) criminal behavior and not renouncing their pleas. In one year, the court will reconvene and the prosecution will recommend a sentence of one to three years probation for the misdemeanor and $5,600 restitution paid to PayPal per defendant. Those who only pled to a misdemeanor will serve up to 90 days in jail.

Even under the more lenient plea deal, some have questioned the proportionality of the charges to the crime. According to the Daily Beast, PayPal contacted the New York Times in 2012 after an article in the paper stated that the hackers shut down the website. The Senior Manager of Corporate Communications for PayPal at the time disputed that fact, saying that in December 2010, "PayPal was never down." Another spokesperson for PayPal said to the New York Times in 2011, "The attack on PayPal site last December slowed down the company's system, but to such a small extent that it would have been imperceptible to customers."

Still, according to the court's records, financial damages from the attack on PayPal caused that company, and eBay, a total of $5.5 million, which is obviously far greater than the total $80,000 to be collected in restitution from the defendants. However, that figure was reported by eBay and PayPal's lawyers.