14 DAY TRIAL // Danish police arrested a young Dane for launching DDoS attacks against Finnish government websites, local newspaper Yle Uutiset reports.
Police did not reveal the suspect's name, but a representative of Finland's NBI's Cybercrime Centre told the press that the identity of the attacker is clear. According to Detective Chief Inspector Jyrki Kaipanen, one man was behind all attacks.
The same suspect is also investigated by Danish authorities for similar DDoS attacks against websites in Denmark, Norway, and the US. All countries collaborated on investigating the attacks, and the FBI got involved too.
In Finland, authorities accused the young Dane of launching DDoS attacks against more than 200 websites, some belonging to the government.
Finnish officials said the crook launched 4-5-hour-long DDoS attacks against the websites of the Social Insurance Institution (Kela), the Ministry of Defence and Parliament. The DDoS attacks took place last spring, in February and March.
At the time, officials said the attacker had managed to slow down the websites, even halt functionality for hours.
There are many incidents involving DDoS attacks that occur on a daily basis all around the world. Most of these take place because of the low cost of renting a DDoS botnet to carry out the attacks.
In most cases, perpetrators get away with their crimes, but sometimes authorities track down and arrest the attackers due to their using their home connection to connect and manage the botnet, or because the perpetrators liked to brag online, revealing their identity.