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 Botmasters Take Heed – You Are Being Put On Notice
By Robin Laudanski
October 1, 2007
All too often victims of Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks are left feeling let down and with a sense that the system fails. CastleCops is no exception. Recently we have seen many sites come under attack and some have even had to close up shop, not surprising when you start to look at the bandwidth costs involved in a DDoS. Last February CastleCops, more specifically PIRT was targeted by a DDoS for something we didn’t do. Paul and I were expecting to be celebrating Valentine’s Day, instead we found ourselves fighting against a DDoS which at its peak reached 969 Mbps we were forced to change our hosting location, and were extremely thankful to our previous host, ApplicationX for not charging us 95th percentile billing. If we had been charged a 95th percentile rate, it would have been the end of this site. DDoS attacks are not just attacks against a single site, when one site is attacked everyone on that network can become a victim, the people trying to get to the sites on the network are affected, the upstream providers are affected and the people who own the machines which make up the Botnet are also affected. Today the system didn’t fail.
Today the arrest and indictment of Greg King, 21, of Fairfield California was announced. In the Indictment, the US Attorneys Office is alleging Greg King aka SilenZ was responsible for the DDoS of CastleCops last February. According to the Press Release he faces a maximum sentence of ten years imprisonment and a $250,000 fine.
There is no “good” reason for a DDoS. Targeting an individual or an online presence can and does have far reaching effects. It is excellent to see the US Attorneys Office taking an active stance with computer crime. Hopefully this is the beginning of a new trend where computer crimes are prosecuted with vigor which would diminish the feeling that the system fails. I have to tip my hat to Law Enforcement and the US Attorneys Office on this. We never expected to see any kind of prosecution so quickly.
Once we know the verdict we will post a follow up. For now it will stand as a beacon showing the system does work. Regardless of the outcome of this trial it is a win for the good guys, it is hope for the victims of DDoS and it should serve as a warning for Computer criminals everywhere. No longer is computer crime going to go unpunished, no longer are the victims of these crimes going to be nameless and faceless. We will not be silenced and neither should anyone else, we have opened a DDoS forum to try to help Webmasters when they have been targeted.
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