David Benjamin Schrooten is a Dutch computer hacker also known as Fortezza[1][2] and Xakep. In 2012, he was arrested in Romania at the request of the United States Secret Service and extradited to Seattle, Washington.[3][4] Here he was sentenced to 12 years in federal prison, primarily for his role in trafficking credit cards he obtained by hacking other hackers.[5] By doing so, he caused approximately 63 million dollars in damages.[6][7][8][9]
In 2014 he was sent back to the Netherlands through a treaty transfer[10] and subsequently released in December that same year.[11] After his release he authored a book named Alias Fortezza[12][13] chronicling his arrest and incarceration.
As a computer hacker he was particularly notorious for hacking rival groups[14] such as the Infraud Organization, in which he crowned himself admin under the alias xakep.[15] He was also known as one of the founders of the cybercrime forum kurupt.[16] That later split up in two separate forums, because of infighting among founding members. The break up resulted in hacking skirmishes between the groups that ended when they started publishing each other names. After his arrest, the remaining forum kurupt.ru kept operating and continued getting themselves involved in high profile hacking endeavours such as the stophaus attack, that broke a part of the internet.[17]
References
edit- ^ Willems, Eddy (2019). "The Role of Government". Cyberdanger - The Role of Government. Springer. pp. 161–178. doi:10.1007/978-3-030-04531-9_10. ISBN 9783030045319. S2CID 164409675.
- ^ Gaines, Larry K.; Miller, Roger Leroy (January 2014). Criminal Justice in Action. Cengage Learning. ISBN 9781305142817.
- ^ "10 arrests that shook the cybercrime underworld. Kaspersky".
- ^ "David Benjamin Schrooten, aka "Fortezza," Dutch hacker, pleads not guilty to mass U.S. credit card theft". CBS News.
- ^ "Study for an Impact Assessment on a Proposal for a New Legal Framework on Identity Theft - European Commission (Fortezza mentioned as example)" (PDF).
- ^ "Dutch Citizen Sentenced to 12 Years in Prison for Computer Hacking Scheme that Stole and Sold Credit Card Info". www.justice.gov. March 9, 2015.
- ^ "Dutch Hacker Accused of Trafficking 100,000 Credit Cards Sentenced to 12 Years". 4 February 2013.
- ^ "Hacking case puts Dutch man in US prison".
- ^ "Power and ego, not money, may have fueled alleged Dutch hacker". 13 June 2012.
- ^ "Dutch Hacker transferred back to the Netherlands".
- ^ "News article mentioning his release". 21 January 2015.
- ^ "Alias Fortezza Audiobook".
- ^ "Publication Esquire about incarceration". 11 June 2016.
- ^ "Mentioned in Sentencing Memorandum Fedir Hladyr" (PDF).
- ^ "Wayback Machine - Mentioned as admin in overview". Archived from the original on 2011-10-14.
- ^ "Feds Arrest 'Kurupt' Carding Kingpin?".
- ^ "Inside 'The Attack That Almost Broke the Internet'".