A man was sentenced to probation after being convicted for Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks as a result of Group-IB and the The Ministry of the Interior (MVD) collaboration work. Group-IB assisted in the investigation, collection, preservation and identification of digital evidence.

The criminal business owner turned out to be a 26-year-old resident of the Sayansk-city, Irkutsk region. The reason for the investigation was an attack on a large financial corporation, which owns several banks. Since the recourse to the Group-IB up to the moment of the attacker arrest there were record-breaking short terms - all of the work was done within a month.

The criminal used underground hacking forums to find clients by posting advertisements for DDoS services. Russians, citizens of  the CIS, Britons and many others ordered his services regularly. Group-IB’s evidence said a man used the Dragon botnet to launch the attacks.

In autumn 2012, authorities had arrested the suspect in Sayansk, Ziminsk district. During the investigation, the accused pleaded guilty and showed detailed process of launching cyber-attacks. Group-IB computer forensic experts proved the guilt of the arrested in committing a series of cybercrimes.  A Sayansk city court judge rendered a guilty verdict against 26-year-old man for unauthorized access to computer information and was condemned to two years of conditional sentence.

The Group-IB experienced experts explained that such attacks are common now as a result of unfair competition between companies. “Commercial organizations should think about DDoS protection,” said Dmitry Volkov, Head of the Group-IB Investigation Department. “However, if the incident has already occurred, the Group-IB is ready to conduct a full and independent investigation and find the attacker using forensic methods and tools.”