By Will Sturgeon, 12 July 2004 18:00
NEWS An aggrieved teenager, sacked from his £120-per-week job, has taken revenge on his bosses by bombarding them with five million emails, effectively crippling their website.
The spam-happy youngster was sacked for failing to complete his time-sheet and decided to launch a denial of service attack against those who had wronged him at UK insurers Domestic & General.
The five-million mail attack brought the company's servers to their knees, brought down the corporate website and cost an estimated £18,000 in lost business (an amount it would have taken almost three years for the youth to earn).
The angry youth has admitted using a spam tool which he downloaded from the internet, capable of sending 100 emails every second, according to the Sun newspaper.
According to the paper he claimed the emails were harmless and constituted nothing more offensive or damaging than "classic lines" from several movies - while clearly choosing not to revisit the fact he sent a server-crippling five million of them.
However, while he may well have been delighted with the chaos he caused, the adolescent cybercriminal may have been less thrilled when Scotland Yard's computer crime unit came knocking on his door.
He now faces six months in prison or a fine of up to £5,000.
The youngster has complained of unlawful arrest to the Independent Police Complaints Commission.
Comments
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1. anonymous
you'd think they'd be able to defend themselves against such a spam attack. Hope their IT Security and Sys Admins are embarrassed.
2. anonymous
Perhaps his talents could have been put to a more constructive use within the firm... advising the IT security team perhaps?
(Ed note. What skills? He downloaded a spam engine from the internet and set it to attack a specific address. Sadly it's little more complicated than downloading a song from Kazaa and listening to it.)
3. Martyn Beswick
You think the IT Department got their time sheets in on time after sorting all those e-mails out?????
4. Patrick Archibald
Why would you think they would be able to defend themselves from a spam attack? Spam wouldn't exist if there were an easy way to block it.
If anyone thinks they know a way to do it, step up and prepare to become rich.
5. Harry Grove
"Scotland Yard's computer crime unit came knocking on his door." .... the Police did WHAT?
Surely that's the job of the Gestapo - not paid public servants?
Haven't the Police got it YET? ...They're no longer a Police FORCE and have, at their own request, become the Police SERVICE. So lads, just knuckle the ol' helmet, mutter "Ev'nin' All" to the local Pimps and Pushers and rush around to knock down the door of the real evil-doers, who are busy sending e-mails!
6. Abdul
The "famous" under cover reporter who managed to live inside Buckingham palace was never jailed, rather was appreciated by everybody. So, the lad also deserves the same as he has shown a security loop hole in the companies network.
7. Captain Peter Anthony Stonemann, C.S.N.
That is really "spam"!!!
Apart from the comical side of the youngster´s revenge, there is a real danger of other "spammers" doing likewise for less justifiable reasons, or even for no reason. The young "spammer" declared that he had down loaded the "spamming" tool from the International Network of computers. This is something to worry about. It means that no technical knowledge will be needed for perpetrating actions of that or of worse kind. Just to down load the tool and put it to work. Worrying.
8. anonymous
Serves him right. Even if he was right to feel agrieved he should not have taken the law into his own hands. I cannot see the difference between him causing £18,000 worth of damage by spamming and causing £18,000 worth of damage by say smashing up his employer's car.
The Police were right to respond to the employer's request for action. Would it have been better for the employer to have responded in kind to our young vandal and used the law of the jungle to exact their revenge? I'll bet that they are better able to do damage to him in this way with the resources available to them than he is to them. He should be grateful for his employer's adherence to the Law that he so flagrantly ignores. Better Mr Plod than the law of the jungle.
He'll probably only get a few hours community service anyway, more's the pity. Perhaps he'll ultimately grow up and use his brain to try and make some money with his own business. If he then has a 'problem' employee, I wonder how he'll react? What goes around comes around. If he learns nothing he'll be back in font of the Judge in few years time for giving his own employees a hard time.
9. G H Mackenzie
Im not surprised this has happened, and to be honest dont really care. This is just one case where the bad guy got caught! There are millions of programs dating back to the eighties which mail "bomb"/"flood" etc. And then you look at some of the more disruptive virii and realise that they were created by 16 year olds looking for fun... Virii which exploit one vulnerability. The thing I worry about is if an experienced programmer were to create a virus which not exploited one vulnerability but hundreds N.B. Bug Bear exploits one vulnerability and cost billions, ~Think how much a multi vulnerability worm would cost world economy! Also size is no longer a question... Virii used to be tiny progs to avoid detection with the advent of global adsl larger virii are going around. So keep your firewall up, spam scanners, Spy sweepers, Nortons quite good until you try to uninstall it!