DraftKings Teen Hacker Enters a Guilty Plea to Theft of Fantasy Sports Bets
In a federal court in New York, a teenager from Wisconsin entered a guilty plea to conspiracy in relation to a plan to steal around $600,000 from DraftKings’ customers by hacking their user accounts and collaborating with other hackers, doing damage to the DraftKings brand in the process.
Before being apprehended by investigators, the defendant, Joseph Garrison, claimed that fraud is enjoyable in a message he wrote to his fellow conspirators, as per a criminal complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan.
Garrison, 19, said that he is dependent on seeing money in his account. He said that he loves getting around stuff.
According to the Manhattan U.S. Attorney’s Office, Garrison conducted a website credential-stuffing assault on November 18 of last year. In these kinds of attacks, hackers get authorized access to user accounts by using stolen credentials from previous data breaches.
According to the office, Garrison and other individuals were able to get access to around 60,000 accounts on the betting website.
In some cases, the hackers were able to introduce a new payment method to the accounts. Prosecutors said that after paying $5 using the new way to confirm its legitimacy, they were able to completely empty the victim account’s money. The attack caused over 1,600 DraftKings accounts to be emptied.
Prosecutors stated that during the federal authorities’ search on Garrison’s Madison home in February, they discovered files on his computer that had about 40 million username and password combinations in addition to tools often used for credential stuffing assaults.
Garrison is due to be sentenced in Manhattan federal court on January 16. He has been free on a $100,000 bail since his arrest in May.
He can get a maximum term of five years in jail on the accusation of planning a computer intrusion.
