US Cybersecurity Firm Founder Admits Funding DDoS Attacks

An American businessman who co-founded a cybersecurity company has admitted to hiring criminals to carry out cyber-attacks against others. Tucker Preston, of Macon, Georgia, confessed to having paid threat actors to launch a series of distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks between December 2015 and February 2016. DDoS attacks prevent a website from functioning by bombarding it with so much junk internet traffic that it can't handle visits from genuine users. In a New Jersey court last week, 22-year-old Preston pleaded guilty to one count of damaging protected computers by transmission of a program, code, or command. Preston admitted to causing at least $5,000 of damage to the business he targeted.