Alleged CastleCops attacker charged

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Tom Espiner ZDNet.co.uk

Published: 04 Oct 2007 17:39 BST

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A man has been arrested and charged with launching denial-of-service attacks against two organisations, one of which was voluntary security community CastleCops.

Greg King was arrested on Monday morning following an extensive investigation by the FBI, and indicted under US computer-hacking legislation, according to the US Department of Justice.

King has been charged with "four counts of electronic transmission of codes to cause damage to protected computers", according to court documents. He is accused of using a botnet of over 7,000 compromised computers to launch denial-of-service attacks against servers used by CastleCops between 13 February and 18 February, 2007, causing damage of at least $5,000 (£2,451).

CastleCops has been the subject of numerous denial-of-service attacks, as well as attacks against its reputation. In September, Robin Laudanski, who co-runs the organisation, blogged that compromised credit-card details had been used to donate sums of money to CastleCops. She suggested the idea was that, when victims found out their money had been taken, they would assume CastleCops was involved in the fraud.

The second organisation that King is alleged to have attacked is KillaNet, an interactive graphic-design community run from Canada, whose servers are in Texas. Between 22 July, 2004, and 10 October, 2006, King is accused of launching distributed denial-of-service attacks against the KillaNet servers and attempting to use a botnet to infect other computers.

If found guilty, King faces up to 10 years' imprisonment and a fine of up to $250,000 (£122,558). When agents went to arrest King at home on Monday morning, he allegedly "went out the back door of the residence carrying a laptop computer, depositing it in the bushes in the backyard", according to the Department of Justice.

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