Student convicted of cyber attacks

A student was convicted Thursday of being part of a computer hacking group "Anonymous's cyber attacks", a court ruled. Christopher Weatherhead, of Northampton, southern England, remained impassive as the unanimous verdict was returned. The 22-year-old took part in distributed denial of service, or "DdoS", attacks - one of which cost the website "PayPal" (paying company using cyber attacks credit cards) 3.5 million pounds. Weatherhead was studying at Northampton University when he joined the cyber campaign which also attacked sites including MasterCard, Visa, the British Recorded Music Industry (BPI) and the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI). Victims of attacks found their website suddenly crashed. The DDoS attacks paralysed computer systems by flooding them with an intolerable number of online requests. Victims' websites would be directed to a page displaying the message: "You've tried to bite the Anonymous hand. You angered the hive and now you are being stung." London's Southwark Crown Court heard that PayPal was attacked after it decided not to process payments on behalf of the Wau Holland Foundation, an organisation involved in raising funds for WikiLeaks. Between December 8 and 17, 2010, PayPal was the victim of a series of attacks "which caused considerable damage to its reputation and loss of trade. " Weatherhead had denied a charge of conspiring to impair the operation of computers between August 1, 2010 and January 22 last year. The jury of six men and five women returned the guilty verdict after little more than two hours of deliberations.