The FBI has accused a county councillor’s son of tapping into a conference call the agency had with the garda fraud squad as it investigated an international hacking ring.
Donncha O‘Cearrbhail, whose online name is palladium, faces up to 15 years jail if found guilty of recording the transatlantic briefing on investigations into the Anonymous outfit and cyber crime.
The 19-year-old student was one of two men arrested last September after the Fine Gael website was shut down following a denial of service attack in January 2011.
A second student, Darren Martyn, 25, from Galway, with the hacker name pwnsauce, has also been named on the charge sheet published by the US Attorney’s office.
According to the document released by Manhattan federal court in New York, he is facing two counts of computer hacking conspiracy.
In court papers the FBI alleges the students identified themselves as members of hacking collectives Anonymous, InternetFeds, LulzSec and AntiSec and were involved in the attack on the Fine Gael website.
