Brent Hanson - USAEYES-FRAUD.com
2010-03-14 03:24:54 UTC
NEBRASKA MAN AGREES TO PLEAD GUILTY IN ATTACK OF SCIENTOLOGY WEBSITES
ORCHESTRATED BY ‘ANONYMOUS'
LOS ANGELES – A Nebraska man agreed today to plead guilty to
participating in an attack on Church of Scientology websites in January
2008 that shut down the group’s websites.
Brian Thomas Mettenbrink, 20, of Grand Island, Nebraska, was previously
indicted by a federal grand jury, but in documents filed today he agreed
to plead guilty to the misdemeanor charge of unauthorized access of a
protected computer and to serve a one-year prison sentence.
According to court documents, Mettenbrink participated in the attack on
the Scientology websites that was orchestrated by a group that labeled
itself “Anonymous.”
That underground group has led protests against the Church of
Scientology at various locations across the country, and in January 2008
announced a new offensive against Scientology. In the court documents,
Mettenbrink admits that he downloaded computer software from an
“Anonymous” message board and used that software to bombard Scientology
websites to the point that it impaired the integrity and availability of
those websites in a variation of a distributed denial of service attack
(DDOS) attack. A DDOS attack occurs where a large amount of malicious
Internet traffic is directed at a website or a set of websites. The
target websites are unable to handle the high volume of Internet traffic
and therefore become unavailable to legitimate users trying to reach the
sites.
ORCHESTRATED BY ‘ANONYMOUS'
LOS ANGELES – A Nebraska man agreed today to plead guilty to
participating in an attack on Church of Scientology websites in January
2008 that shut down the group’s websites.
Brian Thomas Mettenbrink, 20, of Grand Island, Nebraska, was previously
indicted by a federal grand jury, but in documents filed today he agreed
to plead guilty to the misdemeanor charge of unauthorized access of a
protected computer and to serve a one-year prison sentence.
According to court documents, Mettenbrink participated in the attack on
the Scientology websites that was orchestrated by a group that labeled
itself “Anonymous.”
That underground group has led protests against the Church of
Scientology at various locations across the country, and in January 2008
announced a new offensive against Scientology. In the court documents,
Mettenbrink admits that he downloaded computer software from an
“Anonymous” message board and used that software to bombard Scientology
websites to the point that it impaired the integrity and availability of
those websites in a variation of a distributed denial of service attack
(DDOS) attack. A DDOS attack occurs where a large amount of malicious
Internet traffic is directed at a website or a set of websites. The
target websites are unable to handle the high volume of Internet traffic
and therefore become unavailable to legitimate users trying to reach the
sites.