A Turkish national has been indicted in the Northern District of Illinois for launching a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack against a hospitality company headquartered in the United States.
The man, Izzet Mert Ozek, 32, allegedly used the WireX botnet, which consists mainly of compromised Android devices, to orchestrate a DDoS attack targeting the victim company’s website, thus preventing users from completing hotel bookings. The attack took place in August 2017.
Headquartered in Chicago, the hospitality company “managed and franchised luxury and business hotels, resorts, and vacation properties,” the indictment reads.
The servers for the company’s website and booking service were located in the Northern District of Illinois.
The DDoS attack that Izzet Mert Ozek is responsible for, the indictment reveals, caused damages to multiple computers, “aggregating at least $5,000 in value.”
Ozek is charged with intentionally causing damage to a protected computer and a warrant for his arrest will be issued. At the moment, the defendant is believed to be residing in Turkey.
If found guilty and convicted, Ozek faces a sentence of up to ten years in federal prison.
Ozek’s indictment was announced roughly two weeks after Matthew Gatrel was convicted for operating the DDoS service named DownThem, which was responsible for over 200,000 attacks.
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