Cosmo the God, teen leader of a hacker collective that fell second only to Anonymous in terms of notoriety, just got a whopper of a court sentence: six years without any computers or Internet.


Wired's Mat Honan reports Cosmo, who resides in Long Beach, California, and had organized attacks against targets from 4chan to the CIA, is in serious trouble:

"He cannot use the internet without prior consent from his parole officer. Nor will he be allowed to use the Internet in an unsupervised manner, or for any purposes other than education-related ones. He is required to hand over all of his account logins and passwords. He must disclose in writing any devices that he has access to that have the capability to connect to a network. He is prohibited from having contact with any members or associates of UG Nazi or Anonymous, along with a specified list of other individuals. He had to forfeit all the computers and other items seized in the raid on his home."


That's a hacker death sentence. It's also doubtful he'll make it that far without violating the probation. I'd talked to Cosmo for months following his initial arrest this past summer, and he repeatedly found ways to get online, even after his gear had been seized. When he couldn't talk to me himself, he had a friend act as a proxy. The Internet is the kid's home—manipulating it is what he's good at. And asking him to completely sever himself from it for over half a decade—will he even recognize it by then?—seems impossible with anything less than shackles or a ticket to Siberia. At any rate, scratch another capable hacker off the list—it's getting pretty lonely out there. [Wired]