Dennis M. Moran, also known as Coolio, (born in Winchester, Massachusetts in 1982) is an American hacker who was accused in February 2000 of a series of denial of service attacks that shut down some of the most popular websites on the Internet. He was later arrested and plead guilty to defacing the websites of DARE and RSA Security, as well as unauthorized access of US Army and Air Force computer systems at four military bases.   Winchester is a town located in Middlesex County, Massachusetts. ... Logo of D.A.R.E Drug Abuse Resistance Education, better known as DARE or D.A.R.E., is an international education program, for students in kindergarten through 12th grade, which seeks to discourage interest in illegal drugs, gangs, and violence. ... RSA, The Security Division of EMC Corporation (NYSE: EMC), is headquartered in Bedford, Massachusetts, and maintains offices in Ireland, the United Kingdom, Singapore, and Japan. ... The United States Army is the largest branch of the United States armed forces and has primary responsibility for land-based military operations. ... Aircraft of the 379th Air Expeditionary Wing and coalition counterparts stationed together at Al Udeid Air Base, Qatar, in southwest Asia, fly over the desert. ...

On February 7, 2000 a smurf attack generating over 1 gigabit/s of ICMP traffic was launched against Yahoo's routers, causing their websites to be inaccessible to the world for hours. In a message sent to the Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT), Yahoo network engineer Jan B. Koum stated that the attackers were "above your average script kiddie" and "knew about our topology and planned this large scale attack in advance."[1] The smurf attack, named after its exploit program, is a denial-of-service attack which uses spoofed broadcast ping messages to flood a target system. ... Yahoo! - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia /**/ @import /skins-1. ... The CERT/CC (Computer Emergency Response Team Coordination Center) was created by DARPA in November 1988 after the Morris worm struck. ...

Shortly thereafter, Stanford University's computer security administrator David J. Brumley began monitoring Internet Relay Chat (IRC) traffic on irc.stanford.edu, which was a public server on the EFnet IRC network. He discovered discussions about the attack on Yahoo taking place which led him to believe members of the IRC channel #goonies had information about the source of the attacks, and he contacted the FBI to give them transcripts of the IRC chat.[2] Stanford redirects here. ... IRC redirects here. ... EFnet or Eris Free network is a major IRC network, with over 100,000 users. ... Wikipedia does not yet have an article with this exact name. ... // At present, the FBI has investigative jurisdiction over violations of more than 200 categories of federal crimes and is second to only the United States Marshal Service in terms of law enforcement jurisdiction (although the USMS by practice relegates itself to judicial duties, making the FBI the de-facto lead...

Over the following week a series of equally crippling Denial of service attacks effected many other major internet sites including Ebay, Amazon.com, E*TRADE, and Buy.com. A security consultant named Joel de la Garza also began investigating the IRC channel #goonies and while he was in the channel, RSA Security's website was redirected to a hacked web server in Columbia with a defaced copy of their home page. The defacement included a reference to David Brumley's nickname on IRC, as he had joined the channel by then in an attempt to gather more information from Dennis. de la Garza witnessed this live show of criminal activity and later reported about it to the media.[3] In computer security, a denial-of-service attack (DoS attack) is an attempt to make a computer resource unavailable to its intended users. ... eBay headquarters in San Jose eBay North First Street satellite office campus (home to PayPal) eBay Inc. ... Amazon. ... E*TRADE NYSE: ET is a financial services company based in New York City. ... Buy. ... RSA, The Security Division of EMC Corporation (NYSE: EMC), is headquartered in Bedford, Massachusetts, and maintains offices in Ireland, the United Kingdom, Singapore, and Japan. ...

On March 5, 2000 the FBI raided Moran's house and seized his computers. Despite all the incriminating chat transcripts and possession of the contents of his computers, Moran was never charged with any crime by federal prosecutors.

After having so much attention drawn to him, and de la Garza's account of Moran being responsible for defacing RSA's website, the FBI investigated Moran's connections to website defacements further. Eventually they passed this evidence on to the New Hampshire Attorney General's office and Moran was charged as an adult with 7 counts of Class A felony unauthorized access of a computer.[4] One year later on March 9, 2000 he plead guilty to 4 counts of misdemeanor unauthorized access of a computer and was sentenced to 12 months in jail with 3 months suspended as well as ordered to pay $15,000 in restitution.[5]

References

• McWilliams, Brian. "Yahoo!: Attackers Knew Our Weaknesses", "internetnews.com", February 11, 2000, retrieved November 20, 2006.

• Hopper, D. Ian. "FBI investigation swamped with tips, continue to seek Midwest 'Coolio'", "CNN", February 16, 2000, retrieved November 20, 2006.

• Hopper, D. Ian. "Tracking Web site attacker requires persistence, technology and luck", "CNN", February 25, 2000, retrieved November 20, 2006.

• MSNBC. "'Coolio' arrested for defacing site", "Tech News on ZDNet", March 8, 2000, retrieved November 20, 2006.

• Associated Press. "Hacker sentenced, must program jail computers", "USA TODAY", March 9, 2001, retrieved November 20, 2006.

External Links

• Dennis Moran's website