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Two Europeans Indicted In US For 2003 DDOS Attacks
narramissic writes "In a continuation of the first successful U.S. investigation ever into DDOS attacks, Axel Gembe, 25, of Germany and Lee Graham Walker, 24, of England were indicted Thursday by a grand jury in Los Angeles, California, on one count of conspiracy and one count of intentionally damaging a computer system. The two men were allegedly hired by Jay R. Echouafni, owner of Orbit Communication, a Massachusetts-based company that sold home satellite systems, to carry out DDOS attacks against two of Orbit's competitors."
It takes a genius to hire a couple of people to do your dirty work. It takes even greater genius to accept money to damage computer systems, from a complete stranger who would never rat you out.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
It's a criminal investigation. If Company A vandalizes Company B, do you expect Company B to "bring their own evidence to court"?
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
This seems like a good time to consider revoking Orbit Communications' corporate charter.
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
and all they had to do was post a made-up "home satellite" article to slashdot.
While I think it's a good thing that international cyber-vandalism (or whatever you want to call it) is being investigated in regular courts (instead of some super-world thingy), I think the most interesting part is the charges against Lee Graham Walker. According to the article, his crime was using IRC to chat with Gembe about the botnet's code. Now, I'm not a legal expert or even legal savvy, but that sounds like a charge that would easily apply to a lot of geeks who IM with geeks short on ethics. I don't think it's being misused in this case, but it does sound like a pretty wide net.
The government can't save you.
You're wrong. Germany does extradite citizens, as long as a couple of conditions are met.
Specifically, the suspect must have committed a crime that is punishable in both countries, must not be tortured or executed after the extradition, needs a fair trial and so on...
The server was subjected to intentional unusual activities that caused a loss of business services. Is it actual physical damage? I'm not sure. I don't know what the legal definition the law is using.
Either way, they caused business loss using non-legal practices. "Physical" damage or not, they should have know this would've been the recourse.
One of my old co-workers decided to delete all the accounts on our Lotus server in China before he left (no, he wasn't trying to do us any favors either) the company. Sure, the "repair" was to reload the database from backup but that constituted damage under national and international law. He got nailed to the wall for it.
"Don't feel bad for me child; I'm the monster that hides under your bed."