Posted on October 30, 2018 at 4:24 PM
Judge Ordered Man to Pay $8 Million for Launching a DDoS Attack Against Rutgers
Judge Shipp found Jha guilty of bridging the Computer Fraud & Abuse Act. The judge ordered him to perform 2,500 hours of community service with six month home incarceration.
A court ruling was granted in favor of Rutgers University after a man was ordered to pay the sum of $8.6 million for carrying out serious of DDoS attacks against the university. The U.S. District Judge Michael Shipp at the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of New Jersey delivered the judgment on the 26 October against Paras Jha, 22 of Fanwood, New Jersey.
Jha, according to documents retrieved from the court targeted the University with a sequence of attacks from November 2014 to September 2016. The attacks committed by Jha were able to able to bring down the central authentication server of the University, which maintains the gateway portal used by students, faculty, and staff. Because of his action, the DDoS campaigns disrupted both faculty members’ and students’ from exchanging assessments and assignments.
The FBI was informed of the incident and assisted Rutgers in its investigation. In August 2015, the Rutgers University furthered hired three security companies to analyze its network in case of any vulnerabilities.
Jha and His Gang Busted
According to the investigation, this was not the only attack perpetrated by Jha. Interestingly, within the fall and summer of 2016, he created the Mirai botnet with 22 years old Dalton Norman of Metairie, Louisiana and 21 years old Josiah White of Washington, Pennsylvania. The trio within few months infected over 100,000 web-connected devices. Their attacks did not stop there as they went further to commit advertising fraud by abusing the botnet.
In December 2017, the trio pleaded guilty to the charges leveled against them in the District of Alaska for contriving to infringe on the Computer Fraud & Abuse Act by using the Mirai botnet. Less than a year after this, a federal court in Alaska ordered all three to serve 5-year probation periods with 2,500 hours of community service. Furthermore, they were to pay $127,000 as restitution and willingly surrender cryptocurrency seized by law enforcement in the course of the investigation of their crimes.
Judge Shipp gave his sentence within a Trenton federal court. In addition to the judgment, Jha must perform 2,500 hours of community service, complete 5 years of supervised release, and serve six months of home imprisonment for infringing on the Computer Fraud & Abuse Act.
