An Illinois man was found guilty on Thursday by a federal jury in Los Angeles for operating websites that offered power cyber-attacks in exchange online payments.
Matthew Gatrel, 32, of St. Charles, Illinois, was found guilty of three felonies, including one count each of conspiracy to commit unauthorized impairment of a protected computer, conspiracy to commit wire fraud and unauthorized impairment of a protected computer.
According to federal prosecutors, Gatrel owned and operated two "distributed denial of service," or DDoS attack platforms that users could employ to "flood targeted computers with information and prevent them from being able to access the internet."
Records collected by prosecutors showed that one of the sites serviced more than 2,000 registered users and deployed over 200,000 attacks, including some on homes, schools, universities, government websites and banking institutions.
Gatrel was accused of offering "expert advice" to customers on use both DDoS services, including guidance on the best methods to "down" different types of computer and hosting server, as well as how to bypass certain DDoS protection software.
Customers would reportedly select from a variety of paid subscription plans, which varied in terms of cost and attack efficacy.
"Once a customer entered the information necessary to launch an attack on their victim, Gatrel's system was set up to use one or more of his own dedicated [attack servers] to unlawfully appropriate the resources of hundreds or thousands of other servers connected to the internet in what are called 'reflected amplification attacks,'" a press release from the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Central District of California stated.
Juan Martinez, 28, a Pasadena co-defendant, pleaded guilty on Aug. 26 to one count of unauthorized impairment of a protected computer. According to the U.S. Attorney's Office, Martinez was one of Gatrel's customers and eventually became a co-administrator of one of his websites in 2018. Martinez will face a maximum of 10 years in federal prison at a sentencing hearing scheduled for Dec. 2.
Gatrel will return to L.A. federal court on Jan. 27, 2022 for his own sentencing hearing. He faces up to 35 years in prison.
