Second man jailed for Scientology DDoS attack

Filed Under: Law & order

Scientology protest
Even if you don't like someone (or a particular organisation) that's not a reason to commit a criminal act.

In January 2008, a distributed denial-of-service attack (DDoS) struck websites websites belonging to the highly controversial Scientology organisation - flooding them with internet traffic, and making them inaccessible to the outside world.

Yesterday, as The Register reports, a second man was jailed for the attack.

20-year-old Brian Thomas Mettenbrink, who had admitted his involvement in the internet assault at a hearing earlier this year, has now been jailed for one year and ordered to pay $20,000 in compensation.

We all know that Scientology is highly controversial, and they are rarely from the headlines (for instance, it's was just reported that a raid on the organisation's offices in Turin revealed a secret cache of dossiers about Scientology's "enemies").

But the anti-Scientology movement does itself a dis-service, and harm to its arguments, if they engage in cyberwarfare.

There's enough crime on the internet as it is, we don't need people taking the law into their own hands.

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About the author

Graham Cluley is senior technology consultant at Sophos. The readers of Computer Weekly voted him security blogger of the year in 2009 and 2010, and he pipped Stephen Fry to the title of "Twitter user of the year" too. Which was nice. He was also named "Best Security Blogger" by the readers of SC Magazine in 2011. You can subscribe to Graham's updates on Facebook, follow him on Twitter and circle him on Google Plus for regular updates.