Tucker Preston, a co-founder of the Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) mitigation company BackConnect, has admitted to funding DDoS attacks. The 22-year-old was in court last week where he pleaded guilty to one count of damaging a protected computer by the transmission of a program, code, or command. According to his own estimations, the attack caused approximately $5,000 in damage to the business which was targeted. The name of the company which was targeted is being withheld, but it was indicated that the event took place in or around December of 2015. The charge which Preston pleaded guilty to has a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000.
Analyst Notes
This is not the first time that Preston and BackConnect have been in the news for questionable business practices. In 2016 the company was featured in an article detailing how they were hijacking hundreds of Internet addresses from a European internet provider in order to obtain information about attackers targeting BackConnect. Extensive investigations into historical internet traffic at the time revealed BackConnect had hacked the attackers in retaliation, referred to as “hacking back,” a practice that is illegal and can also result in accidental damage to computers not associated with the attackers. More information on this incident can be found at https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/backconnect-founder-funded-ddos/
