Two Europeans Charged in U.S. Over DDoS Attacks

Two European men have been indicted for allegedly orchestrating cyberattacks against two Web sites, a continuation of the first successful U.S. investigation ever into distributed denial-of-service attacks, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.

One of the men, Axel Gembe, 25, of Germany, is believed to be the programmer behind Agobot, a well-known malicious software program used to create a botnet or network of compromised PCs.

Gembe and 24-year-old Lee Graham Walker of Bleys Bolton, England, were indicted Thursday by a grand jury in Los Angeles, California, on one count of conspiracy and one count of intentionally damaging a computer system.

The two men were allegedly hired by Jay R. Echouafni, owner of Orbit Communication, a Massachusetts-based company that sold home satellite systems, to carry out DDOS attacks. Those attacks were directed at the public Web sites of two of Orbit's competitors, Rapid Satellite of Miami, Florida, and Weaknees of Los Angeles.