Police Uncover Father’s Plot While Spying on Hacker Son

Surveillance of a suspected teenage computer hacker accused of attacking a major Web site yielded something unexpected: alleged evidence of an assault his father was planning, police said Thursday.

Lt. Lenny Lechman said the 45-year-old father of the hacker known as Mafiaboy was arrested last week and has been charged with conspiring to commit assault.

Investigators who had tapped the telephones at Mafiaboy’s house heard conversations between Mafiaboy’s father and another man about plans to assault a business associate, Lechman said.

“We felt that before somebody gets hurt really badly we had to intervene as quickly as possible,” he said.

Mafiaboy was arrested Saturday and charged this week with two counts of mischief for a Feb. 8 cyber attack on the CNN Web site.

Mafiaboy’s alleged attack on CNN was one of a series of cyber attacks in February against sites that included Yahoo, EBay and Amazon.com. Because he is 15 years old, he cannot be identified under Canadian law. The same law prohibits naming the father because it would indirectly identify the son.

The attacks flooded sites with so much traffic that legitimate customers were unable to get through.

Police investigators said Mafiaboy boasted in Internet chat rooms about the attacks and was tracked through traces he left of his computer activity.

If convicted, Mafiaboy would face maximum penalties of two years in a juvenile correctional center and a $650 fine.