A man accused of conducting the web’s largest known distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks is under arrest in Spain.
Police took a Dutchman known only as SK into custody and seized computers and mobile phones from his home in Barcelona late last week, at the request of prosecutors in the Netherlands investigating an attack on the Spamhaus Project in March.
Spamhaus, a non-profit organization that manages anti-spam databases, was subjected to “unprecedented heavy attacks” from “forged IP addresses,” a statement by the Netherland’s public prosecutor’s office reveals. Partners of the organization in the US and UK were also attacked.
A statement from Spamhaus explains the “record-breaking attacks” first targeted its websites, mail and name servers, before “escalating to targeting Spamhaus’ supporting networks and services including various Internet exchanges.” The statement adds that the organization’s services weren’t interrupted as a result of the DDoS attack, and thanked all Dutch authorities involved in the investigation.
Various reports suggest Sven Kamphuis is the man arrested. Kamphuis runs Cyberbunker, a Dutch hosting firm Spamhaus had recently blacklisted.