A former Shelton High School student was arrested Dec. 29 for allegedly crippling the school district’s Internet servers.
Shelton police described the suspect as a juvenile and did not release a name.
The server attacks happened in November and December of 2015, and in March and April of 2016.
The person was allegedly launching daily DDOS attacks from a cell phone targeting district computer servers. The attacks crippled the district’s ability to get online.
DDOS stands for “distributed denial of service.”
Wikipedia describes a DDOS cyber attack like a massive crowd showing up in front of a store, but the crowd is there simply to prevent actual customers from entering the store.
It’s different that a “hack,” an informal term to describe a when a security weakness is exploited in a system for unauthorized access to data.
The juvenile was charged with third-degree computer crimes, which would be a felony if he or she was an adult.
State law describes the crime, in part, as interrupting computer service and causing at least $1,000 in damage or creating the risk of physical injury to another person.
The suspect was scheduled to appear in juvenile court Dec. 30. Juvenile court information is not available to the general public.
“The schools Internet has since been fully restored and defense software has been installed to deter future attacks,” according to a press release from Shelton police Dec. 29.
