Prosecutor demands prison time against cyber attacker

The Public Prosecutor demanded a conditional prison sentence of one year against Sven Olaf K., a hacker suspected of carrying out a large-scale DDoS attack against Spamhaus in 2013, NU.nl reports.

In a DDoS attack a server is overwhelmed with random traffic until it crashed. The attack against Spamhaus was the biggest DDoS attack to that date. The attack did not only inconvenience Spamhaus, but also affected millions of intenrent users who had connection problems, because important infrastructure was targeted.

According to the Public Prosecutor, K. instructed a British friend to carry out the attack after Spamhaus - an organization that aims to keep spam from email inboxes - put K.'s company Cyber Bunker on a blacklist.

In 2013 K. did several interviews, pretending to be a spokesperson for Stophaus, the organization that claimed responsibility for the attack. Among other thingss, K. said that Spamhaus "abuses its influence". The attack was carried out by a British hacker called "Narko". At the time of the attack he was still a minor. Narko was already sentenced to 240 hours of community service.

According to the Prosecutor, 39-year-old K. is an accomplice in this DDoS attack and so-called "BGP hijacking", in which internet traffic is diverted to disrupt it. In chat conversations, he instructed Narko to conduct the attacks. "He initiated, chased, contributed, advised, commented and was certainly not just a discussion partner", Prosecutor Dirk Jan Laman said.

K., who was not present at the hearing, claims he is innocent. According to him, he was only marginally involved in the group that attacked Spamhaus. He rejected a settelment proposal because he is sure he will be acquitted, according to NU.nl.

According to K.'s lawyer, Marcel van Gessel, there was no "conscious and close" cooperation between K. and the British teenager, which is why the Narko should be the only one held responsible. He added that the BGP hijacking is not punishable, because the consequences for Spamhaus were "minimal, if not negligible".

The court will rule on November 14th. K.'s been in custody for 55 days. The Prosecutor wants these days deducted from the 1 year suspended prison sentence, which means 310 days are left over.