A 16 year old canadian boy who was nicknamed Mafiaboy pleaded guilty to 56 out of 66 charges for unauthorised access to a computer. He had targeted internet sites like Buy.com, eBay and Yahoo and is estimated to have caused around £1bn in damages.

The teenager was released to await sentencing in Aprils, which could be up to two years in detention and a fine of around £600.

A number of websites were crippled when the teenager bombarded them with thousands of messages within a short space of time, referred to as denial of service attack and this resulted in sites such as Excite and Amazon.com becoming jammed.

These attacks were launched by someone calling themselves the Mafiaboy. He was arrested after being traced through using taps on phones, computer communications and informants. It was said that Mafiaboy often bragged about his attacks in internet chat rooms.