Fergie's Tech Blog

Portrait of an Alleged Young Cyber Punk

Dan Goodin writes on The Register:

Late in the evening of February 13, Paul and Robin Laudanski were planning the following day's Valentine's celebration when they received word that CastleCops, the volunteer security website they run, was under assault.

At its peak, the five-day attack flooded CastleCops with close to 1 gigabyte of data every second. The distributed-denial-of-service deluge was so severe that the husband-and-wife team were forced to take their site offline 15 minutes after it started. It also knocked CastleCops' webhost offline for two days, causing more than $160,000 worth of damage to the company and its customers.

"We were planning on having a family Valentine's event," said Paul Laudanski, who along with Robin was forced to spend the next several days migrating to a new hosting provider. "Then, of course, the DDoS started, which ruined those plans."

The attack, according to federal prosecutors, was the handiwork of Greg C. King, a 21-year-old California resident who at one point maintained a 7,000-node botnet. On Monday, he was publicly charged with four counts of illegal hacking, charges that carry a maximum penalty of 40 years in prison and a $1m fine.

More here.

Note: Paul & Robin are friends of mine, and I'm delighted this kid was busted. - ferg

posted by Fergie @ 10/04/2007 11:41:00 AM