$183,000 Fine in website attack

Eric Rosol, 38, has been sentenced to two years of probation and a fine of $183,000. The Wisconsin man plead guilty to taking part in an Anonymous DDoS attack against the servers of Koch Industries for a total of only one minute.

Rosol downloaded the Low Orbit Ion Cannon tool (propagated by hacking collective Anonymous) and using it to attack the Kochind.com website. He only ran it for one minute, but experts were able to back track his IP address and arrest him.

The attack took place in February 2011. The attack only took down the website for around 15 minutes.

The attack caused Koch Industries less than $5,000 in direct damages. However, they had hired a consulting firm to defend its website at a cost of $183,000. Rosol was ordered to pay them back for that expense.

This is another instance where the deficiencies of the Low Orbit Ion Cannon that Anonymous produces has led to an arrest. It now seems the authorities are getting better at back tracing it.