Police: Parents of teen DDoS hackers are responsible

The leader of the police department's High Tech Crime Team (THTC) is disappointed that children had the latitude to engage in cyberattacks against internet service provider Ziggo earlier this year. Parents need to be more aware of the activities their children engage in online, THTC chief Gert Ras told the Volkskrant.

"Of course, parents cannot know everything. The software is indeed easy to obtain, but it is also easy to find a stone. You also do not to throw this straight through a window," Ras said.

Four of the five people believed to be responsible for two August DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks against ISP Ziggo, and similar threats made against KPN, are aged 14 to 17. The fifth person is 21, police said this week.

He encouraged parents to find out who their children chat with online. "You also want to know the friends they meet with [in person] and the where they hang out on the street," Ras said.

"This is not child's play, but serious criminal activity that can lead to several years' imprisonment." The DDoS attacks bombarded servers with data so as to overload them, creating a situation that does not allow the servers to operate properly.

The attacks on Ziggo left the ISP without services to its clients for two consecutive nights causing 1.8 million of the company’s clients to be without internet access.

Delft University professor of internet security, Michel van Eeten, told De Volksrant that “It works very simply. Perpetrators pay hackers a few bucks and give them the target to attack, commissioned by their own pc’s.” He added that “This would be very stupid as there is always at least one link between the computer of the perpetrator and the victim.”

Police believe that the four minors, under the principal supervision of their parents, did not have their internet activity monitored, saying that parents should delve into questions around a minors internet activity, even if they cannot know everything, police added.

The four minor suspects and the 21-year-old man have had their computers, hard drives, USB and mobile phones seized, and have been released from custody until the conclusion of the trial.