In July, Thomas “zool” Anthony was convicted of over 50,000 hacking crimes. You read that right: 50,000. And that didn’t even include his biggest exploit to date.
Anthony, a 19-year-old American / British
teenager, has a long résumé of alleged cybercriminal activity to his
name. His rap sheet includes money laundering, stealing credit cards, making false
bomb threats, data breaches, felony payment fraud, telecommunication harassment, and violating company secrets. On
Twitter, he once referred to himself as “Untouchable hacker
god.” For all of those deeds and more, he received a two-year suspended sentence and online monitoring.
For his many critics, that was a slap on the wrist—far too little and far too late.