Indian-origin teen arrested in US for choking hundreds of 911 lines

An Indian-origin teenager has been arrested in the US for carrying out a cyberattack that swamped Arizona's emergency services with several bogus calls, an incident he claimed was a non-harmful joke gone wrong

The accused Meetkumar Hiteshbhai Desai. Pic/Twitter

San Francisco: An Indian-origin teenager has been arrested in the US for carrying out a cyberattack that swamped Arizona's emergency services with several bogus calls, an incident he claimed was a non-harmful joke gone wrong.

Meetkumar Hiteshbhai Desai was taken into custody after the Surprise Police Department, Arizona, notified the Sheriff's Office of more than 100 hang-up 911 calls. The Maricopa County Sheriff's Office arrested the 18-year-old, accusing him of carrying out a cyberattack on the 911 system.

Desai was booked into a Maricopa County jail on suspicion of three counts of computer tampering. Interference with critical infrastructure could have disrupted the 911 system in the Phoenix area and potentially other states.

Investigators traced the calls and discovered they originated from a link posted to Twitter. The link was to 3 site named "Meet Desai" and its domain was hosted out of San Francisco. When the link was clicked, it continually called 911 and would not let the caller hang up.

Peoria police and the MCSO also received a large number of calls, and the volume had the potential to shut down 911 service across Maricopa County. Detectives identified 'Meet' and took him in for questioning last Wednesday.

"Meet claims that his intention was to make a non-harmful, but annoying bug that he believed was 'funny'," the Sheriff's Office statement said. Desai told investigators that he was approached by an online friend with a bug. Desai then tweaked the bug so it would add pop-ups, prompts to open e-mails and activation of automatic telephone dialing on iOS devices, all via coding that Desai wrote himself.

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