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Stack Overflow goes down for an hour on Sunday due to DDoS attack

Stack Overflow went out for about an hour on Sunday morning due to a DDoS attack, TechCrunch reported. Stack Overflow is a question and answer website focused on coding that programmers, both professional and amateur, rely on. Stack Exchange, the parent firm of Stack Overflow, told TechCrunch that the site went down because of a DDoS attack on its network provider. According to Webopedia, a DDoS attack or Distributed Denial of Service is a kind of DOS attack “where multiple compromised systems-which are usually infected with a Trojan-are used to target a single system causing a Denial of Service (DoS) attack. Victims of a DDoS attack consist of both the end targeted system and all systems maliciously used and controlled by the hacker in the distributed attack.” Stack Exchange added that the issue has already been “partially mitigated” and the platform is already operational. A 100% free site that does not require any registration, Stack Overflow allows anybody to ask and answer a question. Users vote on the best answers and they then go up to the top. Posts about the outage began to hit micro-blogging site Twitter and Hacker News at about 11 am Pacific Time Sunday. The notes, often humorous, of programmers served as a testament to the importance of the platform to a lot of people, the report said. Some of the Twitter posts about the outage featured in the TechCrunch report included one from Adam (@adamjstevenson) which said, “Stack Overflow being down reminds me how badly I need Stack Overflow in my life.” Another one came from pickett (@pickett) which said “Well, stackoverflow is down. Might as well pack it in and take the day off.” Vineet Shah (@vineetshah), meanwhile, posted “Came to work on a Sunday and Stack Overflow is down EVERYBODY PANIC.” Source: http://www.vcpost.com/articles/21665/20140216/stack-overflow-goes-down-for-an-hour-sunday-due-to-ddos-attack.htm

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Stack Overflow goes down for an hour on Sunday due to DDoS attack

Bitcoin Value Plunges as DDoS Strikes Currency Exchanges Read

Russia and China are backing out of the Bitcoin business. Recent DDoS attacks on a number of major Bitcoin exchanges have caused them to suspend trade. Mt Gox, one of the most significant exchanges, blames hackers trying to create fraudulent transactions for the attack. The value of the cryptocurrency has dropped significantly, from a high of $926 on February 5th to $501.83 as of time of writing. Bitstamp, BTC-e and Mt Gox are all known to have been affected. Tokyo-based Mt Gox argues that the attackers are trying to create uncertainty, and exploiting that uncertainty to duplicate transactions. By intervening just after a transaction is initiated but before it completes and changing the transaction ID, the hacker can create the illusion that the transaction never completed. The hacker then claims a second payment, alleging that the first one wasn’t valid. “Whoever is doing this is not stealing coins, but is succeeding in preventing some transactions from confirming,” says Jinyoung Lee Englund of the Bitcoin Foundation. “It’s important to note that DDoS attacks do not affect people’s bitcoin wallets or funds.” The value of most other Bitcoin variants has fallen, dragged down by the drop in Bitcoin itself. The one exception so far is Dogecoin, whose value has risen markedly. It’s now the third most valuable cryptocurrency, after its value soared 27% in 24 hours. Meanwhile both Russia and China have started cracking down on Bitcoin. Last week the Central Bank of Russia made it illegal to use Bitcoin, alleging that it could be used for money laundering and criminal activity. Russia’s move came after China’s largest exchanges started banning Bitcoin sales earlier this year, as the government cracked down on the cryptocurrency. Alibaba Group, China’s biggest online marketplace, complied with the government’s demands “in the interest of consumer protection,” said a spokeswoman. In both instances it seems likely that, although there are legitimate concerns about criminal activity, the bigger issue is currency control. Though there are benefits – China’s investments in Africa have been made much easier with Bitcoin – neither China nor Russia really likes the idea of an electronic currency that avoids both government regulation and monitoring. “It is proposed to punish (with large fines and imprisonment) all anonymous ‘electronic’ money transfers through the border,” alleged an anonymous Russian Cryptocoins News source. “Since Bitcoin has no borders, it may be the problem.” The source argues that Russia’s political opposition has been funded via Bitcoin for some time, and this crackdown is an attempt to stifle that opposition, as well as a more general reaction against technology the government doesn’t understand. “To put things in perspective,” says Mt Gox as it explains the reasons behind its suspension of trade, “it’s important to remember that Bitcoin is a very new technology and still very much in its early stages. What Mt Gox and the Bitcoin community have experienced in the past year has been an incredible and exciting challenge, and there is still much to do to further improve.” Source: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/132215-Bitcoin-Value-Plunges-as-DDoS-Strikes-Currency-Exchanges?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=news

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Bitcoin Value Plunges as DDoS Strikes Currency Exchanges Read

Exchange Halts Payouts as DDoS Attack Pummels Bitcoin

A second major bitcoin exchange suspended withdrawals on Tuesday, amidst widespread attacks on the vast software system that drives the digital currency. Bitstamp, an exchange based on Slovenia, says that it suspended Bitcoin withdrawals due to “inconsistent results” from its online bitcoin wallet caused by a denial-of-service attack, according to a post on the exchange’s Facebook page. “Bitcoin withdrawal processing will be suspended temporarily until a software fix is issued,” the post reads. The news comes a week after the Tokyo-based exchange Mt. Gox suspended Bitcoin payouts, blaming a known bug in the bitcoin software. At the time, outside observers turned the blame on Mt. Gox’s accounting software, but it turns out that the company isn’t the only exchange struggling to cope with the bug. That a known issue like this could lead to the suspension of payouts on two of the world’s most popular bitcoin exchanges underscores the immaturity of bitcoin and the ongoing growing pains of the the world’s most popular digital currency. These growing pains are not just technical, but political. As Bitstamp battles against these attacks, it’s also worth noting that the Slovenian exchange is not listed as a money services business with FINCEN, the U.S. agency that registers money transmitters — even though it accepts US customers. Bitstamp did not respond to a press inquiry from WIRED. But according to Andreas Antonopoulos, the chief security officer with bitcoin wallet-maker, Blockchain, the effects of this week’s attack should be temporary. “It’s a griefer attack,” he says. “All it does is slow down these exchanges.” But the company could eventually run into serious problems with regulators in the U.S. FINCEN expects even foreign-based money transmitters to register if they service US customers. A Bored Teenager With a Computer? Bitstamp’s technical issues came to light after someone — nobody knows who, exactly — started flooding the worldwide bitcoin network with thousands of bad transaction records. Because of a flaw in the bitcoin protocol, it’s possible for the bad guys to create two unique transaction identifiers — called hashes — for legitimate transactions on the network. The official bitcoin ledger, or blockchain, is not fooled by these so-called “malleable transactions”, but some badly written wallet software could be confused. “It’s like creating a fake receipt,” says Antonopoulos. In theory, someone could try and use one of these fake receipts to try and trick an exchange into believing that a bitcoin transfer had not gone through, but a look at the blockchain would clear things up, he explains. It turns out that a small number of these bad transactions have been broadcast in the background of the bitcoin network for some time now, but after Mt. Gox went public with its problems, someone cranked up the volume. “Some joker is rewriting thousands of bitcoin transactions and rebroadcasting them,” says Jeff Garzik, a core developer on the bitcoin software. “It’s not a ‘massive and concerted’ attack, probably just a bored teenager with one computer.” Antonopoulos, who is working with other bitcoin companies to coordinate a response to the attack, says he’s spoken with five exchanges (not including Mt. Gox) about the issue, and that three of them are unaffected by the issue. None of the five exchanges that Antonopoulos has spoken with appear to have lost money because of the issue, he says. Source: http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2014/02/bitcoin-ddos/

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Exchange Halts Payouts as DDoS Attack Pummels Bitcoin

Largest ever DDoS attack

CloudFlare said that the attack was close to 400Gbps in size, making it bigger than last year’s DDoS attack against anti-spam outfit Spamhaus, which was measured at just over 300Gbps. Confidentiality stopped CloudFlare from revealing the identify of the customer under attack, and there were few details on how many other companies had been affected. The DDoS attack did, however, seem to pose a bigger threat on European networks, with French hosting outfit OVH later reporting that it had fended off a 350Gbps attack. It’s not known if the same attacker was responsible. Company CEO Matthew Prince responded to the news by saying on Twitter that “someone’s got a big, new cannon” and the attack was the “start of ugly things to come”. While the size of this attack is likely to draw the headlines, it’s worth noting that hackers carried out the DDoS attack by using NTP reflection and amplification techniques, which are increasing common for overwhelming target servers by sending more data packets than switches can support. The attack technique has been seen in relatively recent hacks against online gaming services like Steam, League of Legends and Battle and essentially aims to push big traffic to the target’s Network Timing Protocol (NTP) server. In this instance, attackers used NTP reflection to exploit a weakness in the UDP-based NTP, which connects to the Internet to synchronise clocks on machines. The hackers then spoofed the IP address of the target, and sent DNS queries to open DNS resolvers that will answer requests from anywhere. As a result, overwhelming levels of traffic were sent back to the NTP server. CloudFlare has a detailed blog post on NTP reflection attacks. Martin McKeay, senior security advocate at Akamai Technologies, told SCMagazineUK.com that this method of attack troubles unpatched DNS servers, and said that is attractive to attackers because it can reflect huge traffic back to the target. He added that it’s also favourable to the attacker because UTP is “easily spoofed” and because it’s hard for victims to see who is behind the intrusion. “The main reason for using NTP as an attack tool is that it increases traffic by 100 or 200 percent. It’s a great reflection index and makes for a very effective tool if you’re an attacker. “At 400Gbps, it’s conceivable that the attack is being run by a small botnet outputting 20Gbps to 30Gbps of traffic,” he added. McKeay, and other industry commentators, have advised IT administrators to patch and upgrade their NTP servers in light of this attack, although the Akamai exec admitted that some can assume that NTP servers are safe. “NTP servers are often stable and so haven’t often been looked at before. [IT departments] are having to now.” IT administrators are advised, in light of this attack, to patch and upgrade their NTP servers and to check management rights. Speaking recently to SCMagazineUK.com , Visiting Professor John Walker, of Nottingham Trent University, warned that DDoS attacks will continue to be a big threat in 2014, and added that, since company divisions struggle to get their heads around the issue, the firm itself struggles to establish an effective defence strategy. “Since they see the issue solely from their perspective, they cannot hope to develop an effective strategy to deal with this security problem,” he said at the time. A previously unknown division of the UK Government was recently accused of launching DDoS attacks against hactivisim groups such as Anonymous and LulzSec, while a report from the end of last year revealed that most UK companies ignore DDoS threats. Source: http://www.scmagazineuk.com/cloudflare-spots-largest-ever-ddos-attack/article/333480/

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Largest ever DDoS attack

Snapchat Vulnerability Could Lead To iPhone DDoS Attacks

A cyber security researcher has discovered a vulnerability within the Snapchat mobile app that makes it possible for hackers to launch a denial-of-service attack that temporarily freezes a user’s iPhone. Jaime Sanchez, who works as a cyber-security consultant for Telefonica, a major telecommunications company in Spain, said he and another researcher found a weakness in Snapchat’s system that allows hackers to send thousands of messages to individual users in a matter of seconds. Sanchez said he and the fellow researcher discovered the glitch on their own time. Flooding one user with so many messages can clog their account to the point that the Snapchat app causes the entire device to freeze and ultimately crash, or require that the user perform a hard reset. Snapchat is a popular mobile app for iPhone and Android devices that allows users to send each other photo and video messages that disappear a few seconds after they are opened by their recipients. Every time a user attempts to send a message through Snapchat, a token, which is a code made up of letters and numbers, is generated to verify their identity. Sanchez, who wrote about his security findings on seguridadofensiva.com (in Spanish), said a flaw within Snapchat’s system allows hackers to reuse old tokens to send new messages. By reusing old tokens, hackers can send massive amounts of messages using powerful computers. This method could be used by spammers to send messages in mass quantities to numerous users, or it could be used to launch a cyber attack on specific individuals, he said. Sanchez demonstrated how this works by launching a Snapchat denial-of-service attack on my account. He sent my account 1,000 messages within five seconds, causing my device to freeze until it finally shut down and restarted itself. (See the video above.) Launching a denial-of-service attack on Android devices doesn’t cause those smartphones to crash, but it does slow their speed. It also makes it impossible to use the app until the attack has finished. Sanchez said he has not contacted Snapchat about the vulnerability because he claims the Los Angeles startup has no respect for the cyber security research community. He says Snapchat earned that reputation by ignoring advice in August and on Christmas Eve from Gibson Security, a security group that predicted a flaw within the app could be used to expose user data. On New Year’s Eve, another group exploited that vulnerability and exposed the user names and phone numbers of nearly 5 million Snapchat users. “They warned Snapchat about issues — about the possible dump of database — and Snapchat didn’t care,” he said. The Times asked Snapchat if it knew of the vulnerability claimed by Sanchez. Snapchat said it was not aware of the problem. “We are interested in learning more and can be contacted at security@snapchat.com,” a Snapchat spokeswoman wrote in an email reply. Source: http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-snapchat-shut-down-iphone-20140207,0,3127301.story#axzz2sixJmHSh

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Snapchat Vulnerability Could Lead To iPhone DDoS Attacks

The UK allegedly targeted Anonymous and LulzSec hacktivists via a DDOS attack, documents show

The UK allegedly created a spy unit that, other than mounting attacks on cyber enemies, also targeted hacktivists Anonymous and LulzSec, NBC News reports, citing documents taken from the US National Security Agency by whistleblower Edward Snowden. The Government Communications Headquarters Communications (GCHQ) — the UK’s intelligence service — launched a DDOS attack to scare away 80 percent of the users of Anonymous Internet chat rooms, according to the documents. NBC News notes that this makes the British government “the first Western government known to have conducted such an attack.” The British reportedly aimed the DDOS attack against IRC chat rooms where criminal hackers were believed to have been concentrated, after authorities were alarmed by a spate of hacking attacks in 2011, when online hackers wreaked havoc across the Internet, bringing down websites on a purported crusade of righteousness. The victims included the UK. A GCHQ spokesperson emphasized in a statement to NBC News that it carried out its work “in accordance with a strict legal and policy framework” and that its activities — which it didn’t elaborate on — were “authorized, necessary and proportionate.” Source: http://thenextweb.com/uk/2014/02/05/uk-allegedly-targeted-anonymous-lulzsec-hacktivists-via-ddos-attack-documents-show/#!uyXtM

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The UK allegedly targeted Anonymous and LulzSec hacktivists via a DDOS attack, documents show

The future of DDoS, and how to stay ahead of attacks

What’s new in the threat of DDoS attacks? This year there are a new kind of tactics, and I think we’ll see a rise in the new kinds of DDoS. The conventional understanding of DDos is one that involves volume and capacity. You’ll see massive waves of attackers coming at you. But what we’re starting to see is that while that’s still in play, there’s a much more sophisticated kind of attack starting to become more common – and that’s application layer attacks. You don’t need as much volume, and it’s very very hard to detect. DDoS attackers are now expending quite a lot of effort to spoof legitimate sessions. They’ll do a fair amount of reconnaissance on their target, identify where the weakness or vulnerabilities are – say, a login page. And they know that if they run 20, or 50 or maybe 100 concurrent sessions that login, it’ll lock up the backend database, rendering the site down. Ultimately that’s what the DDoS attacker wants to do. It’s a very crude intention, and in this way it’s relatively easy to do with a small amount of bandwidth. This method is much more sophisticated, it takes a lot more expertise, but you know how it is: once it becomes commonplace, it’ll be easy to access these tools and botnets, and these kinds of attacks will proliferate. Right now in the mitigation industry, a lot of companies are offering platforms that can deal with the traditional interpretation of DDoS, but I think the industry’s going to be challenged quite a bit to deal with the more sophisticated and more targeted kind of attacks. Why are some sites more vulnerable than others? Ultimately every website is designed differently. If you talk to designers, you’ll find each of your guys has their own style, which can lead to a number of vulnerabilities, depending on the code, and how the php code has been implemented in the background. If you look at some of the website designs, they start off with the baseline config, they build up over time and don’t change the baseline coding. Then all of a sudden it’s like a Jenga tower. You hit the one holding up the bottom, and it’s all going to fall over. For instance one of the most common problems is when the way you entire data into the database isn’t sanitised well enough, you can throw in a whole series of commands that literally lock up the database. It’s a much smarter way of doing this, and it’s much harder to track. So how are security companies going to deal with that? The strategy right now is less preventing an attack, and more: how quickly can you respond? You need to analyse, parse, and create a quick, customised ruleset that’s very granular and can be applied to specific parts of the website – an element, or a UI for instance. Are they managing to keep ahead of the threat? Well this is the problem: in any security initiative, be it DDoS, or the guys doing data theft, they have the upper hand. All they need is the one strike, and boom – the rest of the industry has to catch up. I think as a whole, the security industry is pretty good at catching up. But we’ll always be reacting. It’s easy to get into. DDoS is still the easiest way to cause havoc and attack an organisation. You can go and rent a botnet for a hundred bucks an hour or even less, now, and just fill a pipe as a crude way of trying to take a site down. It’s still effective, based on where the solution is hosted. It’s far easier than learning the skills necessary to pull off a data theft or something like that. Source: http://www.itproportal.com/2014/02/04/the-future-of-ddos-and-how-to-stay-ahead-of-attacks/

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The future of DDoS, and how to stay ahead of attacks

Credit unions among industries that suffered more DDoS attacks in 2013

A growing number of data center outages are caused by distributed denial of service attacks. On a technical level, DDoS campaigns are much more complicated to address than other leading causes such as human error or IT equipment failure. Accordingly, they often cost hundred of thousands of dollars to resolve. Throughout 2013, credit unions were increasingly targeted by DDoS attacks that overwhelmed their websites with traffic and sometimes created distractions so that other threats could bypass IT security. Going into 2014, mitigating risk from DDoS through software and backup solutions will be the key to reducing the costs and consequences of IT outages. Report finds that DDoS, equipment failure among the leading causes of outages According to one think tank’s research, DDoS attacks accounted for only 2 percent of outages at 67 U.S. data centers in 2010. By 2013, the share had risen to 18 percent. Perpetrators have benefited from ongoing increases in network speeds and the growing complexity of IT infrastructure, both of which have made it much easier to generate massive amounts of fraudulent traffic. The resulting server and equipment failures have footed IT departments with some steep bills. Outages caused by DDoS attacks typically ran $822,000 apiece, far outpacing the $380,000 price tag for incidents attributable to human error. Equipment issues were the most expensive cause, with each event costing slightly under $1 million. While the length of data center outage has gone down over the past few years, related expenses have risen. The average 2013 incident lasted 86 minutes, but cost $690,204, or 37 percent more than in 2010. Credit unions have felt the impact of more frequent DDoS attacks The rise of DDoS attacks has affected IT operations at credit unions, which were targeted by several prominent campaigns in 2013. A $4 billion credit union in Pleasanton, Calif., and a $1.6 billion one in Austin, Texas, had online services knocked out for hours at a time in the wake of DDoS attacks. More specifically, cybercriminals have honed tactics that put financial institution computers through the motions until they become exhausted. For example, a DDoS attack may ask a site for password resets on thousands of spurious accounts, forcing the system to go through each request. Some DDoS incidents may be distractions that facilitate wire theft, but others are politically motivated. Credit unions may need better preparation against DDoS risk, especially since some simply rely on online banking providers or ISPs to protect data. Restore on reboot software can be easily deployed by IT administrators as part of an imaging solution, and it provides fine-tuned management of all office endpoints. Organizations can ensure that kiosks and cash dispensing services remain active even in the event of a crash or attack. Source: http://www.faronics.com/news/blog/credit-unions-among-industries-that-suffered-more-ddos-attacks-in-2013/

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Credit unions among industries that suffered more DDoS attacks in 2013

DDoS Surges in Mobile and Data Centers

Distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks against mobile networks and data centers are increasing significantly: mobile DDoS attacks alone have more than doubled last year, with nearly a quarter of respondents in a new study indicating that they have seen attacks impacting their mobile Internet infrastructure. In addition, more than 70% operating data centers reported DDoS attacks over the last year, up dramatically from the year before. According to Arbor Networks’ 9th Annual Worldwide Infrastructure Security Report (WISR), more than a third of responding data centers experienced attacks that exceeded total available internet connectivity, nearly double from the previous year. Staggeringly, about 10% saw more than 100 attacks per month. The report also found that DNS infrastructure remains vulnerable. Just over one-third experienced customer-impacting DDoS attacks on DNS infrastructure – an increase of a quarter over the previous year. “Despite a really high-profile year for DNS amplification attacks, including the largest attack ever monitored (Spamhaus), there are still a significant number of open DNS resolvers out there within the survey base,” said Andrew Cockburn, consulting engineer for Arbor’s carrier group, in a blog. “Fully 20% of our respondents do not restrict recursive lookups, which when extrapolated to the entire base of DNS resolvers, makes for rich pickings among those that are interested in launching this kind of attack.” He added that after the Spamhaus attack, which was very well-publicized, Arbor saw a large number of copycat attacks in the months following. “And despite this, the number of open resolvers stayed pretty consistent with last year’s survey,” he said. “I think that the increase in lack of internal organizations with specific responsibility for DNS infrastructure is partly to blame. Without a targeted and holistic approach to security, such organizations have no way to connect the dots between their decisions to leave a resolver open, and the associated security risks.” The report found that more than a quarter of respondents indicated that there is no security group within their organizations with formal responsibility for DNS security, up 19% from the previous report. Also, there’s been a dramatic rise in DDoS attack size in general. In all previous years of the survey, the largest reported attack was 100Gbps. This year, attacks peaked at 309Gbps, and multiple respondents reported attacks larger than 100Gbps. “Last year we saw eight times the number of attacks over 20Gbps when compared to 2012,” said Darren Anstee, solutions architect for EMEA at Arbor. “In short, attackers seem to have re-focused on utilizing large volumetric attacks to achieve their goals and this illustrates why layered DDoS defense is such an important message. “ Meanwhile, internal network, advanced persistent threats (APTs) and ubiquitous application-layer attacks continue to be everyday reality for IT departments too. The proportion of respondents seeing APTs on their networks has increased from 22% to 30% year over year – and respondents ranked botted hosts as their No. 1 concern. “The other key aspect of the results this year, from my perspective, relates to internal network threats,” Anstee said. “Over half of respondents this year indicated that they had seen botted/compromised hosts and or APTs on their internal networks during the survey period. This clearly shows that threats are getting inside networks, either around or through perimeter defenses. Organizations need to augment their security postures so that they can identify suspicious or malicious activities wherever they might occur on their networks.” The report also found that application-layer attacks are now common, with nearly all respondents indicating they have seen them during this survey period. There has also been continued strong growth in application-layer attacks targeting encrypted web services (HTTPS): these are up 17% over the previous year’s report. Source: http://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/view/36687/ddos-surges-in-mobile-and-data-centers/

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DDoS Surges in Mobile and Data Centers

Former hacker Mitchell Frost explains his motivation for launching a DDoS attack

In 2006, Mitchell Frost, then a 19-year-old college student at the University of Akron, used the school’s computer network to control the botnets he had created. Authorities say between August 2006 and March 2007, Frost launched a series of denial of service (DDOS) attacks against several conservative web sites, including Billoreilly.com, Anncoulter.com and Rudy Giuliani’s campaign site, Joinrudy2008.com. He is accused of taking down the O’Reilly site five times, as well as disrupting the University of Akron’s network during a DDOS attack Frost allegedly launched on a gaming server hosted by the university. Frost’s dorm room at the university was raided in March 2007. What followed, according to Frost, was a long, complicated legal battle that ultimately lead to him spending over two years behind bars and owing thousands of dollars in legal and restitution fees for his crimes. Frost was released from prison in 2012 and is now serving probation. Frost took the time to talk to CSO about his experience and delves into the reasons why he did it, his thoughts on the punishment he received and his plans for the future. Tell us about your background. How did you become so knowledgeable about computers and when did hacking become something that interested you? I started on computers around a young age and I have always had a mind that wants to keep exploring and learning. Hacking didn’t start overnight, it all started by networking really. First I wanted to be able to have music without paying for it, so I joined some chat rooms on IRC (Internet Relay Chat). IRC is not used much, it’s typically used only by smaller groups of hackers and gamers. When I was younger I would spend many hours in a row on the computer, and when I woke up or had free time, just continue on with what I was working on. You build skills and make connections with others and keep moving up until you have background in hacking. Let’s just say I built my way up over the years 2000-2007. What inspired you to do the kind of hacking you did in 2006 and 2007 to those conservative web sites? What were you hoping to accomplish by hacking those particular sites? How did you choose your targets and why? In 2006, I was young and, even at that age, I could see there was a lot of corruption and media propaganda going on in newspapers and on television. At that time, I had a rather large and complicated botnet. With the botnet, I was able to use the compromised computers for almost anything; key strokes, DDOS, servers, passwords, pranks. I had several botnets over the years from a few to thousands and didn’t do a whole lot of DDOS on servers because I had no need to. I decided that I had to do something about what I was seeing in the world around me, so I knocked a couple of websites offline at the time thinking it will prevent the hate and conflict and fear mongering from being seen by people. When it became clear you were going to face punishment for the attacks, did you think it would mean jail time? They raided me in March of 2007 right after spring break. They took some computer stuff and took my roommate’s stuff and had three agencies do the raid (FBI, Secret Service, Homeland Security) all with guns pointed right at my head. They brought me into a room and said “if you help yourself now it will be easier at sentencing.” I didn’t answer any questions. They released me and didn’t say much. I was scared shitless after that. I didn’t know what to do. I remember now going to a class after the raid to take a math test and was shaking so bad. About one day later, they expelled me from the school, even though I was not charged with anything yet. I moved back home and then contacted the Federal Public Defenders office in Cleveland and was assigned a lawyer. He said cases like mine take time and to stay out of trouble and he would get back to me. I moved back home and got a job working as a carpet-cleaning technician. From 2007 and on, I tried to live a normal life but had that fear that something was coming. I ended up meeting my wife. We fell in love and she got pregnant in December of 2009. Around May of 2010, my lawyer said I randomly received a judge and that it didn’t look good because of her previous sentencing history. I was hoping for maybe a small amount of time or probation, considering I did not get arrested at the time of the raid in March 2007 and had not yet. I was living in fear for almost 4 years, not going to friends or out to parties and all that. The judge ended up giving me 30 months and tried to place me under arrest right at the sentencing hearing. When she did this, it took the prosecutor and my lawyer to walk up to the bench and say I am not a flight risk with a newborn on the way and I knew about these potential charges for three years, so why couldn’t I self-report? She finally agreed to let me self-report so I can tie up some things with my family before my time. There was some debate after your sentencing about whether or not the penalty was too harsh. Do you think it was too extreme? Way too extreme. Who was the victim? Yes, a couple of people had their servers down for a small period of time, but the jacked-up estimates of the damages were over inflated. Example: they said it took $10,000 for them to press one button on one switch to get access back to the network. The reasoning for the sentence has to do with amount of money lost, etc. Bill O’Reilly said he needed to spend $300,000 to upgrade his systems. My lawyer did not fight or really look into their claims of money loss. I think they should of come to some plea with me within a year of the initial raid so I could of dealt with this problem and moved on with my life. Maybe do 3-4 months in some low-security prison and some intensive probation would have been the same. Now it will end up costing me about 10 years of my life — 2006 started it and by the time I’m off probation it will be 2016. All for taking some servers offline. You tell me: is that fair? What has this experience taught you? The experience is not over yet and is far from. I have learned to keep to myself when I see something unjust or unfair or unbalanced all I can do is stay clear of it and talk to people I know or influence and explain my point of view without any damages, physical or monetary. Last year, there was a lot of sadness and discussion around the suicide of Reddit co-founder Aaron Schwartz. As you know, Schwartz was facing a trial after being arrested on allegations of breaching a computer network to download millions of pages of documents kept at MIT. Many feel he was being too harshly prosecuted for the crime and it drove him to suicide. What are your thoughts on that, having faced a sentence yourself? I am very familar with Aaron Schwartz. Did you know he chose to take his case to trial because he was not guilty? He was murdered and it was made to look like a suicide. Who would ignore a plea deal with no jail time, wait for trial and then commit suicide? All he did was download some stuff from the MIT library — most of it was like 30 years old. He was prosecuted because of his ties to a grassroots movement for Internet freedom. What’s next for you? What are you plans for the future? I am rebuilding my life the best I can for having limited resources. I was released Election Day 2012. I was stuck living in a halfway house in the slums of Toledo, Ohio. Then I had to go up the chain of the BOP and the halfway house to get released to home detention. That took about 2.5 months. I started probation on March 8th, 2013. I work at a small store in a town where my wife’s parents let us live in a rental, so we pay them what we can. I pretty much cannot go to school because I owe so much to U of Akron and I have $50,000 in fines and restitution. They take a percentage of my pay each check to give to Bill O’Reilly. I guess when you’re worth $50 million, why not ruin some guy’s life and future and suck every check he makes? I guess my life is not going anywhere until I am off probation. I would like to be a wireless network security consultant, or a real news reporter for the independent media. I will continue to try and make my son and wife’s life the best I can for the position I am in. Source: http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9245624/Why_I_did_it_Former_hacker_Mitchell_Frost_explains_his_motivation?source=rss_latest_content

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Former hacker Mitchell Frost explains his motivation for launching a DDoS attack