I was FBI’s most wanted hacker ‘Mafiaboy’ – I’m now terrified cyber attacks can bring down entire CITIES

A BORED teenager "broke the internet" in one of the most infamous hacking attacks of all time - turning him overnight into one of the world's most wanted men.

Michael Calce was just 15 when he brought down the biggest sites on the web, became the target of an FBI manhunt, and landed himself in prison.

The teenager managed to temporarily topple some of the world's largest websites, including Amazon, eBay and Yahoo!

Now 39-years-old, Michael told The Sun Online how since breaking the internet, he's spent the rest of his life trying to protect it.

The former hacker turned cybersecurity chief warned the world is not ready for a new terrifying frontier in cyber-warfare, which "scares the living daylights" out of him.

The need for protection of online services is greater than ever, with so many critical services and systems dependent on the tech.

He warned that hackers now have the power to weaponize infrastructure against whole populations - something as simple as hacking into a water treatment centre could poison thousands.

"The shock factor of a missile hitting a power grid has an immediate effect," Calce explains. "A hacker sitting behind a computer and shutting down the grid doesn't have the same effect, but the reality is the same."

These current threats, he says, are far more serious than his own ";internet breaking" onslaught back in 2000.

Michael's hack attack caused an estimated $1.2billion worth of damage and landed him in a youth prison for eight months.

But havoc-causing aside, he exposed just how weak and vulnerable those early years of the internet were.

In a little less than a few minutes, a talented kid playing around on his computer had sent America spiralling with the knowledge that a new frontier of warfare had arrived - cyberattacks. 

“Imagine you're 15 years old, and the president of the United States is talking about you and saying that they're looking for you,” he tells The Sun Online.

Michael, who went by the online alias of Mafiaboy, had become public enemy number one in North America.

It would be the wake up call that cemented phrases like “hack attacks” and “cybercrime” into public consciousness.

As a restless kid trapped in Canadian suburbia, Michael was given his first computer in 1990 at the age of six and was mesmerised.

At 9, the internet landed on doorstep in the form of a floppy disk sent in the post. 

No one had ever seen this style of attack before

Michael Calce

It was only a free trial - but the creative youth managed to trick adults into giving up their logins and passwords so he could get unlimited access.

“I was like a very energetic kid, I loved to explore,” he says, but importantly: “I spent all my time on the computer - I just wanted to know how everything worked.”

The internet was now his for the taking. From there, he joined secret online backrooms with hackers working to distribute video game software and music to the masses.

And, so began Michael’s lurch into low-level cybercrimes.

“I became absorbed in this hacker culture. And it got to a point where I started to create a name for myself.” 

It was here that Michael earned his moniker "MafiaBoy" and at only 13-years-old would be recruited by a mysterious "elite" Russian hacker group known as TNT Force.

With his skills and reputation growing, Michael was addicted to the darker corners of the online world and plotted his most ambitious operation yet - one he dubbed "Project Rivolta";.

Battling against other hackers was a game for Michael, not a method of causing harm.

“The ethos of hackers back in the day was not about monetary gain, it was more about who is the number one hacker, who's the best hacker group.”

Approaching the year 2000 and a new style of attack had emerged - shutting off someone else’s network, known as a distributed denial of service - or DDoS.

And so Michael sent "Project Rivolta" - rebellion in Italian - in motion, a massive DDoS attack on some of the world's biggest internet giants, Yahoo!, Amazon, eBay, CNN and Dell.

He combined 50,000 networks around the world into one, creating himself a potent cyber-weapon that could barrage websites until their servers shut down.

“No one had ever seen this style of attack before, especially at this level. So I needed to run a test.”

It didn’t end up being much of a test, Michael shut down Yahoo! - the biggest search engine in the world at the time and for extra measure he paralysed the sites of CNN, eBay, E*TRADE, Amazon and Dell. 

In total, he temporarily toppled 11 of the biggest internet companies, inconvenienced millions and cost his targets potentially billions in losses.

Looking back, Michael wasn’t even sure it would work. “I simply was testing it.”

The goal was, he admits, to use this "super weapon" against his competitors, not the corporate world.