BBC News, 26
April 2013
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| Spamhaus runs lists that log sources of junk mail and other malicious messages |
The 35
year-old-man was detained in Barcelona following a request from the Dutch
public prosecutor.
The attack
bombarded the websites of anti-junk mail outfit Spamhaus with huge amounts of
data in an attempt to knock them offline.
It also
slowed data flows over closely linked networks and led to a massive police
investigation.
The man
arrested is believed to be Sven Kamphuis, the owner and manager of Dutch
hosting firm Cyberbunker that has been implicated in the attack.
"Spamhaus
is delighted at the news that an individual has been arrested and is grateful
to the Dutch police for the resources they have made available and the way they
have worked with us," said a Spamhaus spokesman.
He added:
"Spamhaus remains concerned about the way network resources are being
exploited as they were in this incident due to the failure of network providers
to implement best practice in security."
Spamhaus
servers were hit with a huge amount of data via an attack technique known as a
Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack. This attempts to overwhelm a web
server by sending it many more requests for data than it can handle.
A typical
DDoS attack employs about 50 gigabits of data every second (gbps). At its peak
the attack on Spamhaus hit 300 gbps.
Cyberbunker
is thought to have kicked off the attack in late March after Spamhaus blocked
some servers hosted by the Dutch firm. Cyberbunker bills itself as a firm that
will host anything but child pornography and terrorism material.
Non-profit
Spamhaus maintains what are known as "block lists" which many
organisations use to spot sources of spam and other junk mail to stop them
clogging mail servers and inboxes with unwanted messages.
Mr Kamphuis
took exception to Spamhaus's action saying in messages sent to the press that
it had no right to decide "what goes and does not go on the
internet".
In a statement,
the Dutch public prosecutor said the Dutchman, who it only identifies as
"SK", was "suspected of unprecedented heavy attacks" on
Spamhaus. The house where SK was stayed was searched at the time of his arrest
and Spanish police confiscated computers, phones and hard drives.
It said it
expected SK to be transferred to the Netherlands very soon. A spokesman for the
Dutch police said they were co-operating with British and American authorities
on the investigation into the attack.
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