Cybercriminal facing 25 years inside

A 25-year-old man from Russia is facing extradition to the United States over allegations that he was involved in cyber attacks against the online retailer Amazon.com.

Dmitry Zubakha from Moscow was apprehended in Cyprus and has been indicted for two service attacks against Amazon. It is believed the man also conducted attacks against Priceline.com and eBay back in 2008.

Jenny Durkan, a US attorney, revealed that Mr Zubakha is accused of spearheading a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks against Amazon on June 6th and 9th 2008 – an action which stopped the site from working properly for four hours until the botnet was cleared.

It is alleged that after the attack, he and co-conspirator Sergey Logashov revelled in their attempts to bring down the site on hacker forums.

The charges made against Mr Zubakha include conspiracy to intentionally cause damage without authorisation to a protected computer and two counts of intentionally causing damage to a protected computer which resulted in more than $5,000 (£3,200) in damage.

He has also been given a charge of identity theft due to his alleged involvement in a case of stolen credit card numbers from October 2009.

If convicted, Mr Zubakha could face 25 years imprisonment and be fined more than half a million dollars.

Michael Fey, author of Security Battleground: An Executive Field Manual, recently said that the best way for people with your company to stop hackers is for them to be trained to think like hackers.

This, he believes, will enable them to spot potential weak spots in a company's computer systems so that they can be strengthen up before any real cybercriminals get the chance to exploit the vulnerability.

His message comes at a time when many people in the IT security business are calling on employers to give educational classes to their staff on the potential pitfalls of using computer systems.

Breaking news from iHotdesk, It security solutions in London