14 DAY TRIAL // A computer programmer who built a botnet to DDoS online publications for running a story about him was sentenced to two years in prison.
The story of Bruce Raisley, 48, of Kansas City, Missouri, began back in 2000, when he broke off ties with a group called "Perverted Justice" that hunted and exposed online predators.
Raisley believed the group was acting outside the legal boundaries and made his concerns publicly known, which angered Perverted Justice founder and leader Xavier Von Erck.
Von Erck devised an elaborate plan to humiliate Raisley. He posed as a female named Holly and slowly started an online relationship with the computer programmer.
After some time, Raisley fell in love with Holly and agreed to leave his wife. However, when he went at the airport to wait for her, Von Erck took pictures and posted the whole story on the Internet.
Because of the incident Raisley lost his job, his wife and also had a falling out with his son. The man tried to convince some websites that ran his story to unpublish the articles, but they refused.
He then infected over 100,000 computers with a botnet client and launched distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks against them. Targeted websites included Rolling Stone, Radar, Nettica, Corrupted Justice, and the Rick Ross Institute of New Jersey, who lost over $100,000 as a result.
Raisley was found guilty of distributing a malicious computer program in September 2010 after a six-day trial. He faced a maximum sentence of ten years in prison and a fine of $250,000, but the judge was lenient and sentenced him to two years in jail followed by another three of supervised release. Raisley was also ordered to pay $90,386.34 in restitution.