Trial Ends in Guilty Verdict for DDoS-for-Hire Boss
Summary: A California jury convicted Matthew Gatrel, 32, of St. Charles, Ill., on all three Computer Fraud and Abuse Act charges for running the DDoS-for-hire services downthem[.]org and ampnode[.]com, which investigators say helped about 2,000 customers attack more than 200,000 targets including government, banking, university and gaming sites. His business partner Juan "Severon" Martinez of Pasadena, Calif. pleaded guilty on Aug. 26 to one count of unauthorized impairment of a protected computer, and Gatrel's sentencing is set for January 27, 2022, with a statutory maximum of 35 years.
What you should know: Prosecutors said the pair scanned the Internet for misconfigured DNS devices and sold lists of those addresses to other booter operators, turning unmanaged routers into shared attack infrastructure - and the case was part of a December 2018 crackdown in which the FBI and overseas partners seized 15 booter domains.
Read the original at Krebs on Security ↗
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