If you launch a DDoS attack against Amazon, it’s unwise to brag about it..

Authorities in the United States have charged two men in connection with a DDoS (distributed denial-of-service) attack that crippled websites such as Amazon.com in June 2008.

25-year-old Dmitry Olegovich Zubakha, of Moscow, was arrested in Cyprus last week under an international arrest warrant, having been indicted in a federal court last year for launching botnet-powered denial-of-service attacks against Amazon.com, eBay and Priceline.

The impact of these attacks meant that customers had problems accessing the websites – meaning, effectively, that the sites stopped making money.

Here’s how the problem was described on an online forum for Amazon sellers on 6 June 2008:

Ars Technica reports that the indictment claims that another Russian, Sergey Viktorovich Logashov, was an accomplice of Zubakha, who contacted Priceline to offer his expertise in countering the DDoS attack they were…

Read more in my article on the Naked Security website.

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Graham Cluley •   @gcluley

Graham Cluley is a veteran of the cybersecurity industry, having worked for a number of security companies since the early 1990s when he wrote the first ever version of Dr Solomon's Anti-Virus Toolkit for Windows. Now an independent analyst, he regularly makes media appearances and is an international public speaker on the topic of cybersecurity, hackers, and online privacy. Follow him on Twitter, Mastodon, Bluesky, or drop him an email.