Benjamin Earnest Nichols, a 37-year-old man from Oklahoma City, has been convicted of causing the transmission of a program or code to a protected computer under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA).

Nichols faces a 10-year prison sentence for launching a DDoS attack against the website owned by a security researcher. At the time of the attacks, Nichols was a member of the hacker group Electronik Tribulation Army (ETA).

The attack was launched against mcgrewsecurity.com. Damages to the owner of the site, Wesley McGrew, incurred costs of $5,000 to $6,500 in damages over the course of a year. But Nichols did not stop there. He also set up a fake website under McGrew's name and he posted photo-shopped images of McGrew, ordered sex toys to his home, and used an internet relay chat bot to spew profane insults at McGrew.

Nichols is not the only member of the hacking group that has been convicted. The hacking group leader, Jesse McGraw, aka GhostExodus, was sentenced to nine years in federal prison for planting malicious code on remote-controlled computers at a medical center.

Source: SCMagazine