Alaska Man Indicted For Alleged Attack on United States Court Computer System

 

Anchorage, Alaska - A federal grand jury indicted Scott D. Dennis of Anchorage, Alaska, on April 18, 2000, for allegedly interfering with a government owned communication system.  The indictment states that Dennis, who was the system administrator and computer security officer for the United States District Court for the District of Alaska, initiated at least one of 5 attacks on "Judsys."  Judsys is a mail list server which runs on a computer owned and operated by the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York.  Judsys is a private mail list server whose subscribers are restricted to United States Court System computer system administrators.

The indictment alleges that from  December, 1999, through January 7, 2000, Judsys was the victim of approximately 5 computer attacks.  The method of attack was an electronic mail flood that impaired the availability of Judsys system by overwhelming it with inappropriate electronic mail.  Specifically, Judsys was subscribed to numerous other mail list servers on the Internet.  When the other mail list servers sent an acknowledging e-mail, Judsys was flooded with e-mails.  The computer on which Judsys is maintained had to be shut down and taken out of operations, reconfigured and brought back on-line again.  The attacks came from computers identified by Internet Protocol addresses which were traced to Dennis.

The matter was investigated by Special Agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation with assistance from the security officers of Internet Alaska and GCI.

CHARGES ARE MERELY ACCUSATIONS; AND DEFENDANTS ARE PRESUMED INNOCENT UNTIL PROVEN GUILTY AT TRIAL OR A PLEA OF GUILTY IS ACCEPTED BY THE COURT.