A 38-year-old Romanian man is going to do a one-year stretch in US federal prison for launching a series DDoS attacks against World of Warcraft in 2010. The US Department of Justice said in a statement that Calin Mateias unleashed his digital fury after getting into an unspecified beef with other players.
"Between February and September 2010, typically in connection with in-game disputes with other players, Mateias launched DDoS attacks on World of Warcraft servers in Europe," the agency said. "Mateias’ DDoS attacks caused World of Warcraft servers to crash and prevented some paying customers from accessing the game."
Mateias was indicted for the crime in 2011 following an investigation by the FBI, but was only extradited to the US to face justice last year. He's been in custody since November 20, 2017. He agreed to plead guilty to a single count of intentional damage to a protected computer; in exchange, the US government agreed to drop separate charges related to an attempted hack and robbery of Ingram Micro in 2004.
Along with the one-year prison sentence, Mateias was also ordered to pay (and, according to NBC Los Angeles, has already paid) $30,000 in restitution to Blizzard to cover the cost of defending against his attacks.
