'Bitcoin Baron' sentenced to 20 months for DDoS attack on Madison that took down its 911 system

An Arizona man has been sentenced to 20 months in prison for launching DDoS attacks against the city of Madison, Wisconsin that crippled its emergency communications. Randall Charles Tucker, also known as "Bitcoin Baron" pleaded guilty in April to one count of intentional damage to a protected computer.

In 2015, Tucker launched a series of DDoS attacks against various city websites between March 9 and March 14.

The attacks took down the City of Madison's website and crippled the city's Internet-connected emergency communication system. This caused outages and delays in taking calls, resulting in serious issues with the ability of first responders to connect to the 911 center. It also affected the system used to automatically dispatch the closest response unit to a medical, fire, or other emergency.

The US Justice Department said the 23-year-old boasted about the attacks on social media.

According to his indictment, he also defaced websites and launched a string of DDoS attacks against various entities including the cities of Chandler and Mesa, Arizona, demanding a ransom to stop the attacks. Some of his victims included US municipalities, news websites, banks, gaming servers and a children's hospital among others.

Tucker was previously dubbed "the Internet's most inept criminal" due to his poor OpSec and hacking skills, sloppy defacements and attacks, and common use of automated tools.

In addition to the 20-month prison sentence, he has also been ordered to pay $69,331.56 in restitution to the victims of his attacks.