Tyler Paley

The Arizona Republic

PHOENIX — A teenager has been arrested in connection with a cyberattack on the county's emergency call-in system.

Meetkumar Hiteshbhai Desai, 18, was taken into custody Wednesday after the Surprise Police Department, northwest of Phoenix, notified the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office of more than 100 hang-up 911 calls within a few minutes late Tuesday.

Desai was booked into a Maricopa County jail on suspicion of three counts of computer tampering. Interference with critical infrastructure could have disrupted the 911 system in the Phoenix area and potentially other states.



Investigators traced the calls and discovered they originated from a link posted to Twitter, according to the statement. The link was to a site named "Meet Desai" and its domain was hosted out of San Francisco.



When the link was clicked, it continually called 911 and would not let the caller hang up.

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Peoria police and the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office also received a large number of calls, and the volume had the potential to shut down 911 service across Maricopa County, the sheriff's office said. It could not immediately be determined where in suburban Phoenix that Desai lives.

Detectives identified "Meet" and took him in for questioning late Wednesday. Desai said his intent was to make a nonharmful, yet annoying bug that was meant to be funny, officials said.

Desai told investigators that an online friend approached him a bug, something that keeps a computer program from working as envisioned. Desai then tweaked the bug so it would add pop-ups, prompts to open e-mail applications and activation of automatic telephone dialing on iOS devices, all via code that Desai wrote himself.

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He told sheriff’s detectives that he was interested in programs, bugs and viruses that he could manipulate and change. Desai said Apple Inc. (APPL), the hardware and software company, would pay and credit him for discovering such bugs and viruses.

The Maricopa County Sheriff's Office cybercrimes unit executed a search warrant and seized multiple items at Desai's residence that will will be forensically examined, the officials said.

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