Second Scientology DDoS Attacker Jailed

A Nebraska man has been jailed for a year and ordered to pay $20,000 in compensation to the Church of Scientology for participating in the 2008 DDoS attacks that crashed the organization’s websites.

According to court documents, Brian Thomas Mettenbrink participated in the attack on the Scientology websites orchestrated by the underground hacker group Anonymous. He admitted downloading computer software from an Anonymous message board and using it to bombard…

Member of ‘Anonymous’ Sentenced for Attacking Scientology Church

A member of Anonymous, a loose coalition of hackers, was sentenced yesterday in New York Criminal Court in connection with a Jan. 8, 2009, attack on the Church of Scientology of New York.

Last January, a shirtless Mahoud Samed Almahadin, aka Matt Connor, covered in Vaseline and toenail clippings entered a Manhattan-based Church of Scientology and proceeded to throw around books and smear petroleum jelly onto objects. His actions were…

Hacktivists Strike Australian Government Websites

In protest of proposed censorship regulations by the Australian government, hacktivists launched a distributed denial of service attack against Australian government websites.

Operation Titstorm, launched Wednesday, disrupted access to the sites of the Australian parliament and government, www.australia.gov.au and www.aph.gov.au.

The attacks included pornographic images, which were slated to be censored. The proposed filtering would block websites that feature “extreme sexual content.” The category includes rape, bestiality, and child pornography, but…

Scientology Nets Another Cyber Attacker

Brian Thomas Mettenbrink has signed a plea admitting that he took part in the distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack against the Church of Scientology website last year. Mettenbrink stated that he downloaded the necessary software from a message board run by Anonymous, an anti-Scientology group.

The plea agreement stated “Defendant used that software to, without authorization, access the COS websites at such a high rate that it impaired the…