An anonymous reader writes:
A man from Kentucky is sentenced for prison after being convicted in Detroit of charges that he carried out attacks on computers numbering in thousands and cutting them off from the Internet, as per the news published by Crime-research on June 22, 2007.
Jason Michael Downey, 24 and belonging to Dry Ridge, Kentucky admitted having committed computer fraud in order to operate a botnet. When Downey was pleading guilty in the court, the information presented there served as evidence of Downey's ownership of the Rizon.net Internet Relay Chat (IRC) network from June 18, 2004 to September 5, 2004.
Downey infected large number of computers with various kinds of bot viruses after which the computers responded to Downey's commands. He built a network with about 6,000 computers he had infected.
Through the Internet Relay Chat network, Downey controlled and issued commands to the botnet to hurl a series of 'Denial of Service' (DoS) attacks on different kinds of computer systems connected to the Internet. The attacks overloaded the systems with network data and therefore could not operate properly.
Rizon themselves have not issued any statements regarding the charges, they can be found at http://www.rizon.net/
More of the story can be read at http://www.spamfighter.com/News-8671-Man-Pleads-Gu ilty-To-Cyber-Crime.htm
The full U.S. Department of Justice briefing and sentencing guidelines can be found at the following address.
http://www.usdoj.gov/usao/mie/press/2007/2007-6-20 _mdowney.pdf