The 17-year-old computer hacker responsible for denial-of-service attacks that crippled several Web sites last year has been sentenced to eight months in a juvenile detention center.

On Sept. 14, Montreal Judge Gilles Ouellet said the youth, who was 15 at the time of the incidents, committed a crime when he brought down the Internet sites of Amazon.com Inc., eBay Inc., Yahoo Inc., CNN.com, Dell Computer Corp. and others in February of last year.

The teen, who goes by the Internet nickname “Mafiaboy,” was also sentenced to serve a year of probation after his detention ends, said Montreal prosecutor Louis Miville-Deschenes.

In January, the teenager pleaded guilty to more than 50 charges related to the attacks and one charge of violating the terms of his bail, according to Miville-Deschenes.

The maximum sentence he could have received was two years in custody. Miville-Deschenes said he had asked the judge to sentence the youth to a year in the juvenile detention center, which is a locked facility. He said the defense attorney had asked for no jail time.

“I’m very happy with the sentence,” Miville-Deschenes said, adding that the sentence should serve as a deterrent to other teenage hackers.

As part of the sentence, Mafiaboy is forbidden from profiting in any way from the incident until he has served his probation, he added.

Mafiaboy is also prohibited from possessing any software that’s not commercially available, and he can’t use the Internet to talk with any other hacker.

He also must inform law enforcement authorities of the name of his Internet service provider.