Car plate hacker jailed

A man was sentenced to one year's jail with one year probation on Monday for hacking into the website of Beijing's car license plate lottery, according to Chaoyang district court in Beijing, reported the Legal Mirror.

The man, surnamed Zhang, was also fined 5,000 yuan ($823.5). On December 23, 2012, the website under attack sent over 920,000 phishing messages to license plate applicants, causing up to 50,000 yuan in economic losses to the Beijing Municipal Commission of Transport.

Zhang confessed that his hack was a result of his discontent with Beijing's car plate system. He said that he gained cellphone numbers of the affected applicants so as to send group messages to promote his own software promotion.