An Oregon man has pleaded guilty to launching a DDoS attack against eBay that caused at least $5,000 in damages, US authorities said this week.

Anthony Scott Clark, 21, of Beaverton admitted to working with several other people to take control of 20,000 computers. According to the US Department of Justice, Clark in 2003 exploited a vulnerability in Windows - big surprise there - to gain access to the computers and knock eBay and other sites offline via DDoS (distributed denial of service) attacks. The US Secret Service's Electronic Crimes Task Force investigated the case and pegged Clark as the culprit.

"The 'bots' were then directed to a password-protected Internet Relay Chat (IRC) server, where they connected, logged in, and waited for instructions," the DoJ said in a statement. "When instructed to do so by Mr. Clark and his accomplices, the 'bots' launched DDOS attacks at computers or computer networks connected to the Internet."

Clark faces a maximum penalty of 10 years in jail and a $250,000 fine for "intentionally causing damage to a protected computer."

Court documents show that the government estimated total damages of the DDoS attack at "at least $5,000" over a one-year period. So this hardly stands as a major attack against an e-commerce site.

The government portrayed Clark as the leader behind the DDoS attack and commander of the bots. ®