Man used DDoS attacks on media to extort them to remove stories, FBI says
A 32-year-old Seattle man is behind bars while awaiting a federal hacking trial for launching a DDoS attack. He is being held without bail on allegations that he attacked a US-based legal services website to force it to remove a link to a case citation about his past criminal conduct. The authorities also say the suspect launched distributed denial of service attacks on various overseas media outlets for not removing stories about his credit-card scam and other crimes.
The FBI says that the day after a DDoS attack in January, 2015, the suspect sent an e-mail to Leagle.com pretending to be the hacking group Anonymous. The e-mail explained that the DDoS attack was launched because the defendant, Kamyar Jahanrakhshan, "is being unjustly victimised by you" for not abiding by his numerous requests to remove the link and even pay $100 in cash to get the job done.
"If you do not remove it immediately, more severe attacks will hit your website in the coming days and weeks, and your users will be deprived of your service," the e-mail to the Dallas-based legal services site said, according to an FBI affidavit. (PDF)
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