Man Held for Suspected DDoS Assaults on Websites

Bruce Raisley, a Pennsylvania (US) man, has been accused of allegedly carrying out DDoS (Distributed Denial-of-Service) attacks against nearly 9 websites. 47-year old Raisley has been accused of deliberately causing harm to a secured PC.

Apart from the apparent criminal operations along with motives triggering the same, Raisley has been charged with the attacks' fundamental mechanics.

Moreover, as per a federal grievance revealed on June 30, 2009, Raisley carried out the assaults from a bot network under his control. The network had one bot-infected PC that belonged to Slovenia (Europe's) Academic and Research Network, with the place being the center for the Slovenia-CERT (Computer Emergency Response Team).

Reportedly, the FBI in cooperation with the US-CERT tracked down the activities of the botnet and found a pair of servers, which Raisley apparently utilized to send commands to his zombie systems regarding where and when to launch the attacks.

According to a written account in connection with a criminal grievance, Susan Secco a Special Agent of FBI said Raisley staged frequent DDoS attacks over nearly a year, as reported by ComputerWorld on June 30, 2009.

Secco said Raisley attacked several websites. The chief ones are Corrupted-Justice.net, Perverted-Justice.com, the website of Rolling Stone's magazine, which he attacked repeatedly, and RadarOnline.com.

Meanwhile, the FBI-filed court papers suggest that the entire episode dates back to 2004 during the period of Raisley's voluntary occupation with the non-profit organization 'Perverted Justice'. But after Raisley was asked to disassociate himself from the organization's hostile tactics, he left Perverted Justice.

Following this, magazines like Rolling Stone published stories about how Perverted Justice played tricks that compelled Raisley to abandon his wife in favor of a Perverted Justice operative pretending to be a female online. Humiliated, Raisley tried to remove the articles from various websites but when he failed, he apparently orchestrated the DDoS scheme against Rolling Stone and other online magazines that led to the knock-down of their websites for days.

Meanwhile, after raiding Raisley's residence, the FBI seized PCs and electronics like a memory stick that contained the programs, which aided Raisley in initiating the attacks.

Related article: Man Sues and Wins against ISP for Spamming Mail

» SPAMfighter News - 7/7/2009