MafiaBoy
Encyclopedia
MafiaBoy was the Internet alias of C Tizzle, a high school
student from West Island
, Quebec
, who launched a series of highly publicized denial-of-service attack
s in February 2000 against large commercial websites including Yahoo!
, Fifa.com
, Amazon.com
, Dell, Inc., E*TRADE, eBay
, and CNN
. . He also launched a series of failed simultaneous attacks against 9 of the 13 root name servers.
area of Montreal, Quebec. When he was five, his parents separated and he lived with his mother after she had won a lengthy battle for primary custody. Every second weekend he would stay at his father's condo in Montreal
proper. He felt isolated from his friends back home and troubled by the separation of his parents, so his father purchased him his own computer at the age of six. It instantly had a hold on him: “I can remember sitting and listening to it beep, gurgle and churn as it processed commands. I remember how the screen lit up in front of my face. There was something intoxicating about the idea of dictating everything the computer did, down to the smallest of functions. The computer gave me, a six year old, a sense of control and command. Nothing else in my world operated that way."
with a project he named Rivolta, meaning “riot” in Italian
. Rivolta was a denial of service type of cyber attack
in which servers become overloaded with different type of communications to the point where they shut down completely. At the time, Yahoo!
was a multibillion dollar industry and the web's top search engine
. Mafiaboy's Rivolta managed to shut down Yahoo!
for almost an hour. Calce's goal was, according to him, to establish dominance for himself and TNT, his cybergroup, in the cyberworld. Buy.com
was shut down in response. Calce responded to this in turn by bringing down Ebay
, CNN
, Amazon
and Dell
.com via DDoS over the next week.
In a 2011 interview, Calce tried to redeem his image by saying that the attacks had been launched unwittingly, after inputting known addresses in a security tool he had downloaded from a repository on the now defunct file-sharing platform Hotline, developed by Hotline Communications
. Calce would then have left for school, forgetting the application which continued the attacks during most of the day. Upon coming home Calce found his computer crashed, and restarted it unaware of what had gone on during the day. Calce claimed when he overheard the news and recognized the companies mentioned being those he had inputted earlier in the day, that he "started to understand what might have happened".
and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police
first noticed Calce when he started claiming in IRC
chatrooms that he was responsible for the attacks. He became the chief suspect when he claimed to have brought down Dell's website, an attack that had not been publicized at that time.Information on the source of the attacks was initially discovered and reported to the press by Michael Lyle, chief technology officer of Recourse Technologies
.
Calce initially denied responsibility but later pled guilty to most of the charges brought against him. His lawyer insisted the child had only run unsupervised tests to help design an improved firewall, where as trial records indicated the youth showed no remorse and had expressed a desire to move to Italy
for its lax computer crime laws. The Montreal Youth Court sentenced him on September 12, 2001 to eight months of "open custody," one year of probation, restricted use of the Internet, and a small fine.
Matthew Kovar, a senior analyst at the market research firm Yankee Group
, generated some publicity when he told reporters the attacks caused USD $1.2 billion in global economic damages. Media outlets would later attribute a then-1.45:1 conversion value of CAD
$1.7 billion to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police
. Computer security experts now often cite the larger figure (sometimes incorrectly declaring it in U.S. dollars), but a published report says the trial prosecutor gave the court a figure of roughly $7.5 million.
, computer expert Winn Schwartau
said that “Government and commercial computer systems are so poorly protected today they can essentially be considered defenseless - an Electronic Pearl Harbor waiting to happen.” The Internet
defines the era in which we live in. Whether it be banking, business or social networking, most people have various amounts of personal information online. Mafiaboy was the first to demonstrate how accessible this information is to the public and how easily it could be retrieved. The fact that the largest website in the world could be shut down by a 15 year old created widespread panic. By this time, the internet had already become an integral part of the North American economy. Consumers lost confidence in online business and the American economy
suffered a minor blow as a result. Former CIA agent Craig Guent credits Mafiaboy for the significant increase in online security that took place over the decade.
.
In late 2008, with journalist Craig Silverman, Calce announced he was writing a book, Mafiaboy: How I Cracked the Internet and Why It's Still Broken.
On October 26, 2008, he appeared on the television program Tout le monde en parle
to discuss his book. The entire interview (in French) can be seen at the Télévision de Radio-Canada
website. An English-language interview is available at: Mafiaboy interview on The Hour. The book received generally positive reviews.
High school
High school is a term used in parts of the English speaking world to describe institutions which provide all or part of secondary education. The term is often incorporated into the name of such institutions....
student from West Island
West Island
The West Island is the unofficial name given to the western cities and boroughs of the Island of Montreal, in Quebec, Canada...
, Quebec
Quebec
Quebec or is a province in east-central Canada. It is the only Canadian province with a predominantly French-speaking population and the only one whose sole official language is French at the provincial level....
, who launched a series of highly publicized denial-of-service attack
Denial-of-service attack
A denial-of-service attack or distributed denial-of-service attack is an attempt to make a computer resource unavailable to its intended users...
s in February 2000 against large commercial websites including Yahoo!
Yahoo!
Yahoo! Inc. is an American multinational internet corporation headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, United States. The company is perhaps best known for its web portal, search engine , Yahoo! Directory, Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Groups, Yahoo! Answers, advertising, online mapping ,...
, Fifa.com
FIFA
The Fédération Internationale de Football Association , commonly known by the acronym FIFA , is the international governing body of :association football, futsal and beach football. Its headquarters are located in Zurich, Switzerland, and its president is Sepp Blatter, who is in his fourth...
, Amazon.com
Amazon.com
Amazon.com, Inc. is a multinational electronic commerce company headquartered in Seattle, Washington, United States. It is the world's largest online retailer. Amazon has separate websites for the following countries: United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Japan, and...
, Dell, Inc., E*TRADE, eBay
EBay
eBay Inc. is an American internet consumer-to-consumer corporation that manages eBay.com, an online auction and shopping website in which people and businesses buy and sell a broad variety of goods and services worldwide...
, and CNN
CNN
Cable News Network is a U.S. cable news channel founded in 1980 by Ted Turner. Upon its launch, CNN was the first channel to provide 24-hour television news coverage, and the first all-news television channel in the United States...
. . He also launched a series of failed simultaneous attacks against 9 of the 13 root name servers.
Early life
Calce was born in the West IslandWest Island
The West Island is the unofficial name given to the western cities and boroughs of the Island of Montreal, in Quebec, Canada...
area of Montreal, Quebec. When he was five, his parents separated and he lived with his mother after she had won a lengthy battle for primary custody. Every second weekend he would stay at his father's condo in Montreal
Montreal
Montreal is a city in Canada. It is the largest city in the province of Quebec, the second-largest city in Canada and the seventh largest in North America...
proper. He felt isolated from his friends back home and troubled by the separation of his parents, so his father purchased him his own computer at the age of six. It instantly had a hold on him: “I can remember sitting and listening to it beep, gurgle and churn as it processed commands. I remember how the screen lit up in front of my face. There was something intoxicating about the idea of dictating everything the computer did, down to the smallest of functions. The computer gave me, a six year old, a sense of control and command. Nothing else in my world operated that way."
Project Rivolta
On February 7, 2000, Calce targeted Yahoo!Yahoo!
Yahoo! Inc. is an American multinational internet corporation headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, United States. The company is perhaps best known for its web portal, search engine , Yahoo! Directory, Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Groups, Yahoo! Answers, advertising, online mapping ,...
with a project he named Rivolta, meaning “riot” in Italian
Italian language
Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...
. Rivolta was a denial of service type of cyber attack
Denial-of-service attack
A denial-of-service attack or distributed denial-of-service attack is an attempt to make a computer resource unavailable to its intended users...
in which servers become overloaded with different type of communications to the point where they shut down completely. At the time, Yahoo!
Yahoo!
Yahoo! Inc. is an American multinational internet corporation headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, United States. The company is perhaps best known for its web portal, search engine , Yahoo! Directory, Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Groups, Yahoo! Answers, advertising, online mapping ,...
was a multibillion dollar industry and the web's top search engine
Search engine
A search engine is an information retrieval system designed to help find information stored on a computer system. The search results are usually presented in a list and are commonly called hits. Search engines help to minimize the time required to find information and the amount of information...
. Mafiaboy's Rivolta managed to shut down Yahoo!
Yahoo!
Yahoo! Inc. is an American multinational internet corporation headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, United States. The company is perhaps best known for its web portal, search engine , Yahoo! Directory, Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Groups, Yahoo! Answers, advertising, online mapping ,...
for almost an hour. Calce's goal was, according to him, to establish dominance for himself and TNT, his cybergroup, in the cyberworld. Buy.com
Buy.com
Buy.com, Incorporated is an online retailer based in Aliso Viejo, California.Buy.com began by selling computers and electronics in 1997 and has since expanded into many other categories...
was shut down in response. Calce responded to this in turn by bringing down Ebay
EBay
eBay Inc. is an American internet consumer-to-consumer corporation that manages eBay.com, an online auction and shopping website in which people and businesses buy and sell a broad variety of goods and services worldwide...
, CNN
CNN
Cable News Network is a U.S. cable news channel founded in 1980 by Ted Turner. Upon its launch, CNN was the first channel to provide 24-hour television news coverage, and the first all-news television channel in the United States...
, Amazon
Amazon.com
Amazon.com, Inc. is a multinational electronic commerce company headquartered in Seattle, Washington, United States. It is the world's largest online retailer. Amazon has separate websites for the following countries: United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Japan, and...
and Dell
Dell
Dell, Inc. is an American multinational information technology corporation based in 1 Dell Way, Round Rock, Texas, United States, that develops, sells and supports computers and related products and services. Bearing the name of its founder, Michael Dell, the company is one of the largest...
.com via DDoS over the next week.
In a 2011 interview, Calce tried to redeem his image by saying that the attacks had been launched unwittingly, after inputting known addresses in a security tool he had downloaded from a repository on the now defunct file-sharing platform Hotline, developed by Hotline Communications
Hotline Communications
Hotline Communications Limited was a software company founded in 1997, based in Toronto, Canada, with employees also in the United States and Australia. Hotline Communications' main activity was the publishing and distribution of a multi-purpose client/server communication software product named...
. Calce would then have left for school, forgetting the application which continued the attacks during most of the day. Upon coming home Calce found his computer crashed, and restarted it unaware of what had gone on during the day. Calce claimed when he overheard the news and recognized the companies mentioned being those he had inputted earlier in the day, that he "started to understand what might have happened".
Aftermath
The U.S. Federal Bureau of InvestigationFederal Bureau of Investigation
The Federal Bureau of Investigation is an agency of the United States Department of Justice that serves as both a federal criminal investigative body and an internal intelligence agency . The FBI has investigative jurisdiction over violations of more than 200 categories of federal crime...
and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police
Royal Canadian Mounted Police
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police , literally ‘Royal Gendarmerie of Canada’; colloquially known as The Mounties, and internally as ‘The Force’) is the national police force of Canada, and one of the most recognized of its kind in the world. It is unique in the world as a national, federal,...
first noticed Calce when he started claiming in IRC
Internet Relay Chat
Internet Relay Chat is a protocol for real-time Internet text messaging or synchronous conferencing. It is mainly designed for group communication in discussion forums, called channels, but also allows one-to-one communication via private message as well as chat and data transfer, including file...
chatrooms that he was responsible for the attacks. He became the chief suspect when he claimed to have brought down Dell's website, an attack that had not been publicized at that time.Information on the source of the attacks was initially discovered and reported to the press by Michael Lyle, chief technology officer of Recourse Technologies
Recourse Technologies
Recourse Technologies was a network security company based in Redwood City, California. Founded by Frank Huerta and Michael Lyle in February 1999, it was later acquired by Symantec on July 17, 2002 for US$135 million....
.
Calce initially denied responsibility but later pled guilty to most of the charges brought against him. His lawyer insisted the child had only run unsupervised tests to help design an improved firewall, where as trial records indicated the youth showed no remorse and had expressed a desire to move to Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
for its lax computer crime laws. The Montreal Youth Court sentenced him on September 12, 2001 to eight months of "open custody," one year of probation, restricted use of the Internet, and a small fine.
Matthew Kovar, a senior analyst at the market research firm Yankee Group
Yankee Group
Yankee Group, a Massachusetts company, sells advice and market-research information relating to information technology.-History:Founded in 1970, the Yankee Group emerged as the first independent technology research and consulting firm...
, generated some publicity when he told reporters the attacks caused USD $1.2 billion in global economic damages. Media outlets would later attribute a then-1.45:1 conversion value of CAD
Canadian dollar
The Canadian dollar is the currency of Canada. As of 2007, the Canadian dollar is the 7th most traded currency in the world. It is abbreviated with the dollar sign $, or C$ to distinguish it from other dollar-denominated currencies...
$1.7 billion to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police
Royal Canadian Mounted Police
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police , literally ‘Royal Gendarmerie of Canada’; colloquially known as The Mounties, and internally as ‘The Force’) is the national police force of Canada, and one of the most recognized of its kind in the world. It is unique in the world as a national, federal,...
. Computer security experts now often cite the larger figure (sometimes incorrectly declaring it in U.S. dollars), but a published report says the trial prosecutor gave the court a figure of roughly $7.5 million.
Significance
While testifying at a congressional hearing in Washington, D.C.Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
, computer expert Winn Schwartau
Winn Schwartau
Winn Schwartau is an expert on security, privacy, infowar, cyber-terrorism and related topics. He is known not only for his trademark mustache and appearances at Defcon but also his provocative and original ideas that make audiences think, wonder and understand highly technical security subjects...
said that “Government and commercial computer systems are so poorly protected today they can essentially be considered defenseless - an Electronic Pearl Harbor waiting to happen.” The Internet
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
defines the era in which we live in. Whether it be banking, business or social networking, most people have various amounts of personal information online. Mafiaboy was the first to demonstrate how accessible this information is to the public and how easily it could be retrieved. The fact that the largest website in the world could be shut down by a 15 year old created widespread panic. By this time, the internet had already become an integral part of the North American economy. Consumers lost confidence in online business and the American economy
Economy of the United States
The economy of the United States is the world's largest national economy. Its nominal GDP was estimated to be nearly $14.5 trillion in 2010, approximately a quarter of nominal global GDP. The European Union has a larger collective economy, but is not a single nation...
suffered a minor blow as a result. Former CIA agent Craig Guent credits Mafiaboy for the significant increase in online security that took place over the decade.
Later years
During the latter half of 2005, he wrote a column on computer security topics for Le Journal de MontréalLe Journal de Montréal
Le Journal de Montréal is a daily tabloid newspaper published in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, and is the largest-circulation French-language newspaper in North America. Established by Pierre Péladeau in 1964, it is owned by the Sun Media division of Quebecor Media. It is also Canada's largest tabloid...
.
In late 2008, with journalist Craig Silverman, Calce announced he was writing a book, Mafiaboy: How I Cracked the Internet and Why It's Still Broken.
On October 26, 2008, he appeared on the television program Tout le monde en parle
Tout le monde en parle (Quebec)
Tout le monde en parle is a Quebec talk show hosted and co-produced by Guy A. Lepage, broadcast on Radio-Canada since 2004. It has been adapted from the French show of the same name, created and hosted by Thierry Ardisson.- Concept :...
to discuss his book. The entire interview (in French) can be seen at the Télévision de Radio-Canada
Télévision de Radio-Canada
Télévision de Radio-Canada is a Canadian French language television network. It is owned by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, known in French as Société Radio-Canada. Headquarters are at Maison Radio-Canada in Montreal, which is also home to the network's flagship station, CBFT-DT...
website. An English-language interview is available at: Mafiaboy interview on The Hour. The book received generally positive reviews.