Man gets 10 years for hacking network of Boston Children's Hospital

Julie Spitzer -

A Massachusetts man will serve more than 10 years in prison for his role in a 2014 cyberattack on the computer networks of Boston Children's Hospital and a mental health facility, Reuters reports.

A federal jury in August found Martin Gottesfeld guilty of one count of conspiracy to damage protected computers and one count of damaging protected computers. He carried the attack out on behalf of hacking activist group Anonymous as a protest of the hospitals' treatment of a teenager.

As part of his advocacy for the teenager's release from the hospital, Mr. Gottesfeld launched a distributed denial of service attack on Framingham, Mass.-based Wayside Youth & Family Support Network, the residential treatment facility where the patient stayed after her discharge from Boston Children's in March 2014.

In April 2014, Mr. Gottesfeld carried out another attack on Boston Children's computer network, knocking out its internet and affecting several area hospitals. Mr. Gottesfeld fled once federal investigators began looking into the hack. He was arrested in February 2016 when a Disney Cruise Line ship rescued him and his wife from a boat off the coast of Cuba.

A federal judge on Jan. 10 ordered Mr. Gottesfeld to pay $443,000 in restitution, in addition to serving a prison sentence of 10 years and a month.

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