Reporter Sentenced to Two Years in Prison for Assisting Anonymous Hacker Group

The Anonymous hacker group has been one of the most outspoken antagonists when it comes to having grievances with the stance of many high profile individuals, companies, and terrorist events. In the hacker group's relentless quest to attack certain entities that they have strong disagreements with, they have had help from many facets of the technical community. As it turns out, the help is in deep water as a Sacramento man receives a two-year prison sentence for assisting the Anonymous hacker group's efforts in hacking the LATimes news site in 2010.

Matthew Keys, from Sacramento, CA, had the law laid down on him after being convicted in October of 2015 facing up to 25 years. The result of his conviction was rather light in that he was only sentenced to serve two years in prison for his technical assistance to the Anonymous hacker group during their attack on the LATimes news website in 2010.

Keys was a reporter who worked for the KTXL Fox 40 TV station in Sacramento. After being fired from his job, Keys was linked up with one of Anonymous' LulzSec groups where he offered login credentials of KTLX's backend. Keys even suggested that the hacker group not use the credentials only for research, but instead use them to mess stuff up. Only Key's words were a bit more colorful through the use of four-letter words.

Keys, during 2013, was a writer for Reuters but was later fired for his inaccurate reporting surrounding the Boston Marathon bombings. It was just a month before his firing that his hacker activity was first discovered and later led to his conviction.

Due to KTLX's website's Content Management Software was running on a shared multi-site platform, other news sites had access, and Keys could provide passwords to hackers so they may be granted access to sites like the latimes.com. At the time, authorities discovered Key's activities in assisting hackers in hacking the latimes.com website and defacing many of its headlines that remained active for about 30 minutes.

Evidence has surfaced out of the case that ultimately sentenced Keys to two years in prison, such as email taken from various KTXL subscribers and them being spammed to spark a conflict between them and the KTXL TV station.

In addition to Keys' prison sentence, he must face the judge to determine financial damages that the LATimes has brought forth in the hacking case during 2010. It's possible that Keys may be required to pay up as well as serve two years of his life behind bars for assisting Anonymous hackers.

We hope that Keys' situation makes an example out of what can happen when someone assists with the operation of a hacker organization or group.