Spamhaus has thanked the law enforcement community for bringing to justice some of the individuals suspected of being responsible for the massive distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack launched against the organization’s systems in March 2013, but wants other alleged conspirators to also be charged.
The UK’s National Crime Agency (NCA) announced in late June that a 17-year-old had been charged with computer misuse, fraud and money laundering following an investigation carried out by the agency. The teen, who has not been named because he is still a minor, was arrested in April 2013 on suspicion of being involve in the DDoS attack against Spamhaus, which British authorities said led to “worldwide disruption of internet exchanges and services.”
The first suspect arrested in the case was 35-year-old Dutch national Sven Olaf Kamphuis, who was apprehended by law enforcement authorities in Spain. Kamphuis, who was affiliated with the Dutch “bulletproof” hosting provider Cyberbunker, was later extradited to the Netherlands where he currently stands trial.
In a statement published on Monday, Spamhaus’ Quentin Jenkins revealed that the two suspects are not the only ones believed to be involved in the attack.
“With two of the attackers now charged and awaiting trial, Spamhaus has hopes that the other conspirators, consisting of two United States nationals, two Russians and a Chinese national will also soon be charged. Several more spammers and cybercrime-involved server hosting company owners were peripherally involved and at this time most have been identified by both Spamhaus and law enforcement,” Jenkins said.
Spamhaus believes that a Russia-based group named “Stophaus” is responsible for the March 2013 DDoS attack. This group allegedly targeted Spamhaus because the organization disrupted their malicious campaigns, including cybercrime hosting enterprises, spam and botnet operations.
The DDoS attack aimed against Spamhaus reached 300 Gbps and at the time it was called the biggest attack in history.The cyberattack targeted Spamhaus’ website, mailservers, nameservers, supporting networks and services, and impacted the organization’s hosts and DNS partners.
Related Reading: Cyberattack Capable of Downing Entire Internet Is Unlikely
Eduard Kovacs (@EduardKovacs) is a contributing editor at SecurityWeek. He worked as a high school IT teacher for two years before starting a career in journalism as Softpedia’s security news reporter. Eduard holds a bachelor’s degree in industrial informatics and a master’s degree in computer techniques applied in electrical engineering.
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