14 DAY TRIAL // Two Korean men were arrested last week for launching distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks against a number of 109 online gambling websites on behalf of a criminal gang.
According to prosecutors, 32-year-old Lee, the owner of a server co-location company, handled the hosting for a gambling website ran by an Incheon-based criminal syndicate.
The site was managed by a 37-year-old hacker named Park, under the supervision of Yeom, 34, one of the gang's high ranking members.
Sometime last November, Yeom devised a plan to launch DDoS attacks against rival gambling websites in order to drive their customers to his own business.
For this purpose, he rented a botnet of 50,000 infected computers from Chinese hackers and asked Lee and Park to carry out the attacks.
Investigators claim that between November 21 and December 15, the two men attacked gambling websites for a period of two hours every day. The targets were supplied to them by Yeom via online chat or SMS.
In addition, between November 23 and December 10, Lee also DDoSed a job seeking site because its owners refused to do business with his company.
"It is the first time that a crime ring has hired a professional hacker, provided necessary equipment and made systematic DDoS attack," a prosecutor told Korea Times.
DDoS attacks between business competitors is not uncommon in Asian countries. In May 2009, an attack launched by a Chinese online game vendor against its rivals resulted in an unexpected cascade effect that knocked out Internet in five provinces.
The demand for DDoS even led to the creation of professional services. Back in September, we reported about a website called IMDDOS which let paying customers schedule attacks against their desired targets.