Teen accused of hacking parenting site excused from court to sit his exams
David Buchanan, 18, is on trial for attack on popular parenting site Mumsnet by pro-father hacking activists
A TEENAGER who allegedly brought down parenting website Mumsnet on behalf of a dad-friendly hacking group was allowed to skip court today - so he could sit an exam.
David Buchanan, 18, is charged with disabling the popular website twice during a hacking spree in 2015.
But the teenager from Haslemere, Surrey, was excused from an appearance at Guildford magistrates' court on Tuesday in order to sit a test.
Buchanan is accused of taking part in an attack on the mothering forum claimed by pro-dad hacking group DadSec in August last year.
It called the forum 'anti-father'.
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As part of the ruse a call was made to police to report a murder at the home of the website's founder Justine Roberts.
The call led to an armed police unit swooping on her North London home in the middle of the night.
The group’s hack also saw users of Mumsnet have their personal information become available to online phishing.
Following the incident, Roberts wrote: “We were hit by another denial of service attack which meant we were offline until this morning, as soon as we got back up we were attacked again.
“This attack was double the size of the previous one and was distributed across many servers but we have no reason to believe that any security breaches occurred, the intention was to take the site offline.
“We are contracting external protection providers to help deal with future issues. The police are continuing their investigation.”
Buchanan is charged with three offences under the Computer Misuse Act.
He will appear before court on 12 July.
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