Inside The Trojan Horse Business
The owners of the Web sites that the 21-year-old King harassed alleged in court filings that he engaged in a campaign of harassment, intimidation, threats, and finally massive DDoS attacks. Using the online monikers Silenz and GregK to taunt his victims in brazen online posts of threats and links to porn sites in IRC chat channels and message boards, he launched repeated attacks on Killanet, a Web site aimed at children and teenagers, dating back to June 2004 and continuing through October 2006. According to published news reports, King's motivation was revenge for perceived slights.
King had no interest in subtlety or in masking where his attacks originated from, and reportedly even dropped hints as to his real-life identity. He controlled his botnet from his parents' home in Fairfield, Calif., as well as from a nearby library, a McDonalds, and from a Best Buy store near his home.
In February 2007, King used his botnet to DDoS the servers used by Castlecops for five continuous days. The motivation for the attack: Castlecops moderators had deleted or modified some of King's more vitriolic posts to the message board. "If you edit my post once more, you will be sorry," King wrote in a post on February 13th. Four minutes later he was banned from the message board. That night, King launched his attack.
