[ISN] 'Anonymous' hacker pleads guilty to 2008 attack on Scientology sites

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2009/05/perpeterator-of-2008-cyberattack-on-scientology-pleads-guilty.html

By David Sarno
Los Angles Times
May 11, 2009

Remember that cyber-attack on Church of Scientology websites those many 
moons ago? It was an early volley in the brief but memorable war between 
the church and a group of young Internet denizens who called themselves 
"Anonymous."

Since then, the anti-Scientology movement has mostly petered out, but 
today a spark traveled through its old circuitry when a 19-year-old New 
Jersey man admitted having launched the January 2008 attack, which sent 
Scientology sites down for part of a day.

According to a news release from the Justice Department's Los Angeles 
office, Dmitriy Guzner of Verona, N.J., pleaded guilty to computer 
hacking charges related to the 2008 distributed denial of service attack 
(DDOS) on Scientology websites. That's where hackers get so many zombie 
computers to visit a site that the server overload becomes crippling and 
the site crashes.

The department's release mentions that Guzner said he "participated in 
the attack because he considered himself a member of an underground 
group called 'Anonymous.' " But when asked whether Guzner was one of 
several participants or the main culprit, agency spokesman Thom Mrozek 
responded, "He was the guy."

[...]


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