Two European hackers have been indicted by a US grand jury for a devastating denial-of-service Internet attack back in 2003. The indictments are part of the FBI’s ongoing “Operation Cyberslam,” which was established in 2003 after a series of vicious hacker attacks knocked both government and private Internet servers off-line in the west coast of United States. Losses resulting from the attacks are estimated at up to $1 million, according to an official FBI statement.
The individuals charged — Lee Graham Walker, a British national, and Axel Gembe, a German — are accused of being the masterminds behind the denial of service attacks. Both of the accused may face as much as 15 years in a federal prison if convicted. The men are charged with conspiracy and inflicting intentional damage on a computer system, and their indictment represents the first major success from the FBI’s Operation Cyberslam.
The Department of Justice has revealed that the German man, Axel Gembe, is suspected to be the programmer responsible for “Agobot,” a devastating virus that has been used to implement hundreds of denial of service attacks over the years, as well as the illegal delivery of spam mail.
A brief released from the grand jury hearing indicated that the two men had discussed the attack before hand via private IRC communications. The suspects also allegedly worked together to create a specific bot for the attack, and plotted to take out the web sites in question on several occasions.
A denial of service attack takes place when a hacker umleashes a flood of small information packages (known as synchronization packets) toward a targeted web site. The Department of Justice also contends that the same bot used by Walker and Gembe has been instrumental in creating massive amounts of malicious Internet traffic, as well as carrying millions of spam messages to unsuspecting e-mail users.
Although it has taken five years to win an indictment against the men in question, the FBI are hailing the grand jury’s decision as a major victory, and proof that Operation Cyberslam is a successful program.
Critics contend, however, that the FBI has been far too slow to respond to the increase in cyber crime over the past decade. They point out that Operation Cyberslam was only initiated in 2003, and has failed to put a dent in the increasing onslaught of malicious hacker attacks in the United States.
There’s also some question as to whether the Department of Justice will be able to get a conviction in the case. Although IRC communication records have been submitted as evidence by the FBI, there is little in the way of physical evidence connecting the two men to the crime, and simply talking about attacking the web sites is not an admission of guilt.
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