Hackers rally around Dutch WikiLeaks DDoS suspect

10.12.2010
Members of RevSpace, a hacker collective in The Hague want to teach "Jeroenz0r," currently in custody for cyberattacks against Mastercard and Visa, a lesson or two to make him a real hacker. That is, an ethical hacker.

The High Tech Crime Unit of the Dutch National police arrested the 16-year-old boy and confiscated his computer equipment on Wednesday night. He is accused of being a driving force behind the distributed DDoS (denial-of-service) attacks against the websites of Mastercard and Visa earlier this week.

The suspect, who sports the online nickname "Jeroenz0r," is a regular on the IRC chat channels of the local hacker club in The Hague called . Some of its members know the boy. "What he has done is of course out of the question," says Koen Martens, head of Revspace in an with Webwereld, a Dutch IDG publication.

Martens emphasized that a DDoS attack has nothing to do with real hacking and shouldn't be confused with it. But the RevSpace members, who pride themselves on being benevolent white-hat hackers, see no reason to oust the boy. Quite the contrary. "It's obvious that we will have to guide him. We will help him learn what ethical hacking really means and to point out what is inadmissible and wrong," says Martens.

According to Martens, it is important to keep the door open and give the boy a chance to develop in a positive way. "Hopefully, people will not abandon him," he said.