US teen admits to 'Anonymous' DDoS attack on Scientology
Up to 10 years in the clink
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A New Jersey man has admitted he participated in January's high-profile cyber attack on the Church of Scientology that took its website offline and caused as much as $70,000 worth of damage.
Dmitriy Guzner, 18, of Verona, New Jersey, helped carry out the crippling distributed denial of service (DDoS) assault because he believed it furthered the goals of the anti-Scientology group "Anonymous," to which he claimed to belong, according to court documents filed in federal court. He has agreed to plead guilty to a single felony charge of unauthorized impairment of a protected computer.
He agreed to pay $37,500 in restitution, a fee he is "jointly and severally liable" for with others who participated in the attack. He faces a maximum of 10 years in federal prison. A sentencing hearing has not been scheduled. Guzner is a student who participated in, but did not organize, the attacks, said his attorney, Jeffrey Chabrowe, of The Blanch Law Firm in New York.
The attacks, which at times rendered Scientology's website unreachable, were said to be in retaliation for its misuse of copyright and trademark law in censorship of criticism against the church. The DDoS attacks, which take websites offline by bombarding them with more traffic than they can handle, were largely unsophisticated brute force, floods, security experts have said.
The Church of Scientology responded by moving its systems to a managed service run by security firm Prolexic.
Assistant US Attorney Wesley Hsu declined to provide additional details about the attack except to say that Guzner was located on the east coast while participating in the attack and that the Scientology servers were located in California.
This is the second time this month that an operative claimed to be linked to Anonymous has been hauled into court for hacking crimes. Last week, the son of a Tennessee legislator pleaded not guilty to charges he illegally broke in to the Yahoo Mail account of US vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin. Screenshots from Palin's account eventually were posted to the Wikileaks website, an act Anonymous took credit for.
Guzner was tracked down by the US Secret Service, the FBI, the Los Angeles Police Department and the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office. The US Attorney's Office in Los Angeles is prosecuting the case. ®
COMMENTS
Agnostics
we have had our martyrs.
I have given up on pure agnosticism, too cut and dry for my liking. I am now into pluarality with a dose of paganism and matrix-esque overtures along with a healthy dose of paradoxical certainty and uncertainty, fluctuating in a shallow sine curve, with a z axis of extreme compassion, and a sprinkling of 4th dimensional naughty spiciness.
So far it is working out great for me.
@Anonymous Coward
Do you know how many teapot accidents occured in 2006? If I recall correctly, 467.
That's a lot.
You're right in so far as it used to be a LOT higher but nowadays we're much cleaner.
Which, if you'd bothered to read the rest of the message, would have been the FREAKING POINT! These strange ideas were part of what really did have to happen for health and safety. Since science discovered why these things were needed, we've been able to clean up our act and remove the need for these restrictions (though I admit I don't know why the mixed fibres thing was made up). Before then, religion figured that demons caused illness and a good healthy stink saw them away.
@Mark
"Do you know how many infections occur because of smeg under the foreskin?
A lot."
Are you sure you're not, to twist an expression, talking bollocks? The majority of europeans don't have vasectomies, and also don't contract cock infections. Don't spread FUD.
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