Attacker Pleads Guilty of Launching DDoS on ‘Akamai’

A man aged 32, on December 6 2006, found guilty in federal court in case of computer hacking of two well known universities to carry out a 'distributed denial of service' (DDoS) attack on 'computer servers' of Akamai Technologies, according to the U.S. attorney's Boston office.

John Bombard belongs to Seminole, Fla., who pleaded culpable before 'U.S. District Judge' Patti Saris in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts for two instances of deliberately accessing protected computer systems, illegally.

In June 2004, John Bombard deliberately acquired command of computer systems without the consent of 'Columbia University' in New York and 'Bucknell University' in Pennsylvania. He then ran a program on those systems that allowed Bombard to interact with a computer network he compromised in various venues over the Net.

Bombard used a 'Gaobot' worm variant to compromise those computer systems and then conducted unauthorized interaction from the computer systems of the universities with the 'botnet' from a computer situated remotely on his domain, "f0r.org".
Bombard made several attempts to instruct his 'network of computers' to inundate targeted computers with a large number of requests for simultaneous response. The result was crash down of the computers that rendered them disable. One attack expended a Cambridge-based company a massive amount of $41,000 covering response cost and lost revenue.

The 'DDoS attack' against Akamai's global traffic management servers that worked for many customers resulted in a considerable increase in Internet content to a significant number of its 'domain name servers'. These customers suffered non-accessibility of their Websites for a certain time period.

Bombard has to now fulfill two years of imprisonment and an additional year of restricted movement. He also has to pay a fine amounting $100,000.

The punishment for hacking, or "intentionally accessing a protected computer without authorization" could be penalties of up to two years' imprisonment and a fine of $200,000.

Officials from Cambridge Mass-based Akamai couldn't be contacted for comment. This particular case has been possible because botnet controllers are increasingly using sophisticated techniques. Even after major arrests this summer, attackers have continued to maintain their zombies by writing new worms.

Related article: Attackers Use Another ‘Word Flaw’ To Plant Trojan

» SPAMfighter News - 12/16/2006