Man Who Joined Anonymous Attack for '1 Minute' Fined $183,000

A 38-year-old man was sentenced to two years probation and a hefty fine for participating in a distributed denial-of-service attack organized by hacker collective Anonymous against the webpage of Koch Industries in 2011.

The surprising part? He only joined the attack for one minute.

Eric J. Rosol, a Wisconsin resident, was charged with being part of Anonymous’ attack on the Kansas-based company, Kochind.com, on Feb. 28, 2011, using a popular DDoS tool, which was found on his computer

Rosol, however, says he was part of the attack for one minute. He pleaded guilty to one misdemeanor count of accessing a protected computer, and was sentenced to two years of federal probation and ordered to pay $183,000, the Department of Justice said in a statement acquired by IT World. The monetary amount is equal to what Koch paid for a consulting group to come in post-attack and fix their website. The attack itself only took Koch’s website down for about 15 minutes. Read more...