The hacker who almost ruined Linux website and its servers in 2011 has been arrested by Miami Police.
The US Department of Justice has said that that the person who was deemed responsible for the Linux Kernel Organization’s website (kernel.org) and also the servers of Linux Foundation in 2011, the 27-year-old Donald R. Austin, has finally been caught by the police.
The accused belongs to El Portal, Florida and is due to face court proceedings in San Francisco by the end of September.
The police have charged him for international transmission leading to damaging a secured computer system. In fact, Austin has been charged with four accusations, which include leading an extensive hacking campaign against Linux corp., which eventually led to the shutting off of the company’s servers so as to clean the system and remove the malware infection. Also, Austin has been accused of infecting the servers of Linux with Ebury Trojan, which is a malware designed specifically to target Solaris, Linux and FreeBSD. And, he has been accused of leaving trails on the Linux systems for other hackers so that they could exploit the systems. He also hacked email account of an employee at the Linux corp.
As per the court documents , the accused stole the credentials of one of the admins of the Linux servers and then used the information to infect their system with Phalanx malware. According to the prosecution, Austin wanted to access Linux builds.
Phalanx is a self-injecting kernel rootkit that has been designed for compromising the Linux 2.6 version. It is a highly sophisticated malware that can hide files, sockets and even processes and is equipped with sniffing capabilities.
How was he apprehended?
Well, the Miami police held him for a traffic offense this Thursday and when he identified himself, they instantly knew that they have caught one of the most wanted hackers.
As a result of these hacking, Linux servers remained offline for a month because the admins needed to make sure that the system was clean. However, finding the hacker wasn’t as easy as it took the law enforcement 5 long years to get to their man.
Must Read: New Trojan Turns Linux Devices into Botnet
Currently, Austin is on bail as he paid the required bail money of $50,000. He will be appearing in a court in San Francisco on 21 September. If found guilty Austin would likely get 40 years in jail along with $2m as a penalty.
DOJ
![Child sexual abuse is a burning issue right now. It's a sad reality that people are forcing innocent kids to participate in torturous sexual acts to make money. Thankfully, the tech community is working towards eliminating this social evil. [wp_ad_camp_4] Reportedly, Apple will be launching a new machine learning-based system to be released later this year as part of the upcoming versions of iOS and iPadOS to ensure enhanced child safety. The system will scan iPhones across the USA to detect the presence of child sexual abuse images. Moreover, the messages app in iPhones will issue a warning whenever a child part of iCloud Family receives or tries to send sexually explicit images. About the New CSAM System Apple has developed a system dubbed neuralMatch to located child sexual abuse material/CSAM, and it will scan US customers' devices. The system will be launched soon amidst reservations from the cybersecurity fraternity as they claim authoritative governments could misuse the system to perform surveillance on their citizens. However, Apple claims that the system is a new "application of cryptography" to limit the distribution of CSAM online without impacting user privacy. How NeuralMatch Works? The new system will find matches for already known/available CSAM before storing an image in iCloud Photos. If a match is found, a human reviewer will conduct a thorough assessment and notify the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children about that user, and the account will be disabled. "This innovative new technology allows Apple to provide valuable and actionable information to NCMEC and law enforcement regarding the proliferation of known CSAM," Apple noted. [wp_ad_camp_4] "Before an image is stored in iCloud Photos, an on-device matching process is performed for that image against the known CSAM hashes," and the system has "extremely high level of accuracy and ensures less than a one in one trillion chance per year of incorrectly flagging a given account," the company wrote. Could It be Exploited? Critics of this system have raised concerns that this technology might be expanded for scanning phones for banned/prohibited content or political views/speech. In addition to this, Apple is planning to scan users' encrypted messages to locate sexually explicit content as a separate child safety measure. It is worth noting that the detection system will flag images of child pornography already present in the center's database. So, parents need not worry about it. According to John Hopkins University's top cryptography researcher, Matthew Green, this system can be used to target and trap innocent people by sending them objectionable images to trigger a match with child porn images. Apple's algorithm could be fooled easily, and anyone could be framed because such systems are easily tricked. "Researchers have been able to do this pretty easily. What happens when the Chinese government says, 'Here is a list of files that we want you to scan for… Does Apple say no? I hope they say no, but their technology won't say no," Green stated. [wp_ad_camp_4] Did you enjoy reading this article? Like our page on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.](https://www.hackread.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/apple-scan-us-iphones-for-child-sexual-abuse-content.jpg)
