Second man jailed for Scientology DDoS attack

Scientology protest
Even if you don’t like someone (or a particular organisation) that’s not a reason to commit a criminal act.

In January 2008, a distributed denial-of-service attack (DDoS) struck websites websites belonging to the highly controversial Scientology organisation – flooding them with internet traffic, and making them inaccessible to the outside world.

Yesterday, as The Register reports, a second man was jailed for the attack.

20-year-old Brian Thomas Mettenbrink, who had admitted his involvement in the internet assault at a hearing earlier this year, has now been jailed for one year and ordered to pay $20,000 in compensation.

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We all know that Scientology is highly controversial, and they are rarely from the headlines (for instance, it’s was just reported that a raid on the organisation’s offices in Turin revealed a secret cache of dossiers about Scientology’s “enemies”).

But the anti-Scientology movement does itself a dis-service, and harm to its arguments, if they engage in cyberwarfare.

There’s enough crime on the internet as it is, we don’t need people taking the law into their own hands.


Graham Cluley is an award-winning keynote speaker who has given presentations around the world about cybersecurity, hackers, and online privacy. A veteran of the computer security industry since the early 1990s, he wrote the first ever version of Dr Solomon's Anti-Virus Toolkit for Windows, makes regular media appearances, and is the co-host of the popular "Smashing Security" podcast. Follow him on Twitter, Mastodon, Threads, Bluesky, or drop him an email.

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