Denial Of Service Accused Faces Jail Time

Published: Friday, September 09, 2005 Online-Casinos.com

DENIAL OF SERVICE ACCUSED FACES JAIL TIME

US hackers acted as hitmen for a wealthy businessman

The Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) threat is still very much alive and well in the USA it seems, with news this week that a hacker from Ohio faces prison time after admitting he carried out one of a series of crippling denial-of-service attacks ordered by a wealthy businessman against his competitors.

In a deal with prosecutors, Richard "Krashed" Roby, 20, pleaded guilty in federal court in Toledo to intentionally damaging a protected computer, after launching a 2003 attack on an online satellite TV retailer that caused at least $120,000 in losses.

"There were a lot of big-time people making a lot of money who picked up on him and persuaded him to do this, without a lot in it for him," said Roby's defence attorney. "He's one of these people who are brilliant in one area but absolutely lacking in common sense in others."

Jay Echouafni, the 38-year-old satellite TV entrepreneur who allegedly ordered and funded the cyberhits, remains a fugitive from a Los Angeles federal indictment.

In a related deal, 31-year-old Paul Ashley admitted to recruiting three other computer intruders to carry out Echouafni's orders. He has not yet entered a guilty plea. Under federal sentencing guidelines, Ashley faces 70 to 87 months in prison for his role in the attacks, but the terms of his plea agreement make him eligible for a reduced sentence in exchange for his testimony against other defendants.

"If Ashley were to cooperate with the government and, for example, testify against Echouafni, he could get a departure from his sentence," said Los Angeles assistant U.S. attorney James Aquilina, who's prosecuting the case.

Roby faces 18 months to two years in prison under sentencing guidelines.

Until it was shuttered by an FBI raid last year, Ashley ran a company called Foonet from a basement server room in his suburban Ohio home. The enterprise enjoyed a double-edged reputation for providing hosting that could stand up to distributed denial of service, or DDOS, attacks, even as it gave safe harbour to members of the computer underground drawn to the bulletproof service.

"Every script kiddy on IRC had a shell there," says Andrew Kirch, a security administrator for the Abusive Hosts Blocking List. "Spamming, hacking, phishing, DDOS networks -- you want to run scans for a large amount of IP space for prevalent Windows vulnerabilities? Set up there."

In his plea agreement, Ashley admitted he knowingly allowed clients and employees to control networks of compromised Windows machines, or "bots," from Foonet.

That came in handy in October 2003, when Echouafni, a Foonet client, offered Ashley $1,000 to snuff out two websites.

Echouafni, who was CEO of Massachusetts-based Orbit Communication at the time, allegedly claimed that competitors RapidSatellite.com and WeaKnees.com had stolen his content and attacked his online business, which sold satellite TV gear over the web.

Ashley took the money and, according to his plea agreement, recruited three associates to do the dirty work: Jonathan Hall, Lee Walker and Joshua Schichtel, known online as "Rain," "sorCe" and "Emp" respectively.