A Russian man believed to be behind cyber attacks on Seattle-based Amazon.com and other online retailers in 2008 has been arrested in Cyprus, says U.S. Attorney Jenny Durkan.
Dmitry Olegovick Zubakha, 25, of Moscow, was indicted by a Seattle Grand Jury in May 2011 for conspiracy to intentionally cause damage without authorization to a protect computer and with being in possession of at least 15 unauthorized access devices. He’s charged with aggravated identity theft in another case involving possession of stolen credit card numbers in October 2009.
“The old adage is true: the arm of the law is long,” said Durkan, who leads the Justice Department’s Cybercrime and Intellectual Property Enforcement Committee. “This defendant could not hide in cyberspace, and I congratulate the international law enforcement agencies who tracked him down and made this arrest.”
The indictment, unsealed Thursday, alleges that Zubakha mounted two “denial of service” attacks against Amazon.com on June 6 and June 9, 2008. In both instances, the attacks flooded the on-line retailer’s computers with requests to display pages with particularly large graphics and photographs. In both instances, the attacks overwhelmed Amazon.com’s servers and caused their systems to crash. Zubakha and a co-defendant, Sergey Vioktorovich Logashov, are also accused of similar attacks on Ebay.com and Priceline.com.
The indictment alleges the men took credit for the attacks in hacker Internet forums.
In one instance, Logashov is accused of calling Priceline.com and offering his expertise as a computer consultant to stop the attack. In October 2009, law enforcement traced the possession of more than 28,000 stolen credit card numbers to the men. Zubakha is charged with aggravated identity theft for illegally using the credit card of a Lake Stevens resident. Logashov remains at large, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
The possession of illegal access devices and conspiracy counts each carry a prison sentence of up to 10 years and a possible $250,000 fine. Conviction on aggravated identity theft could add an additional mandatory two years on top of any other sentence they receive.
Zubakha is awaiting extradition.
