We have heard a lot lately about cyber attacks coming from organized groups like LulzSec and Anonymous for various reasons. But this newest cyber attack story we have for you is just a tad different. The Federal Bureau of Investigation has announced that Khalid Shaikh, the former CEO of the popular web file delivery site YouSendIt.com, has pleaded guilty to launching a cyber attack against his former employer. The FBI web site"s press release states that Shaikh has now been released on $100,000 bail and will be sentenced on September 29.
Shaikh was one of the founders of YouSendIt.com in 2004 and served as the company"s first CEO until 2005. He stayed on at the company as its chief technology officer until 2006. According to the FBI"s press release, after he left the company Shaikh uploaded the ApacheBench benchmarking program to YouSendIt.com"s web servers. The result of the action was that "Shaikh was able to overwhelm the servers’ capabilities and render it unable to handle legitimate network traffic." There is no word as to why Shaikh would do such a thing to his former company.
A federal grand jury indicted Shaikh in 2009 on "four counts of transmission of a code to cause damage to a protected computer." Under this week"s plea agreement, Shaikh has now pled guilty to just one of those counts. When he is sentenced next month he could get as much as five years in prison, three years of probation and fines of up to $250,000.