August 30th 2014
A 19-year-old man has been convicted of carrying out a cyber attack that caused the Metropolitan Police website to crash a year ago.
Teesside Magistrates' Court heard how Jordan Jones, unemployed of Billingham, Cleveland carried out a Denial of Service (DoS) attack on the site between 12th and 14th August 2013.
DoS attacks involve sending a substantial number of requests being sent to a single computer hosting a website, overloading it and effectively rendering it unable to provide a service. In this case, evidence shows that Jones used his own computer to overload the website, which eventually ground to a halt after two days's bombardment.
Jones was arrested in March this year at his home address, from which an encrypted laptop was also seized. He was subsequently charged with four unauthorised acts with intent to impair, or with recklessness as to impairing, the operation of a computer, under the Computer Misuse Act 1990, to which he pleaded guilty. He is due to be sentenced – also at Teesside Magistrates' Court – on 1st October.
Detective Inspector Sanjiv Gohil of the Metropolitan Police's Cyber Crime Unit, said: “Most denial of service attacks are aimed at businesses and the downtime to their websites can and often does cause a huge dip in their revenue. But in this case, the loss was to the public. Every day, thousands of people turn to the Met's website for advice about crime and to report offences. Being unable to do this and access the advice they are looking for there and then can make a huge difference to how crime impacts those people."
DI Gohil continued: "I would like to reassure the public that there is no evidence of a compromise to anyone’s personal details as a result of this attack.”
