Student pleads guilty to helping organize Anonymous DDoS attacks

Steve Slayo, a 19-year old Australian student, has pleaded guilty to having organized a DDoS attack targeting – among others – the websites of the Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and the Communication Minister Stephen Conroy, as part of the so-called Operation Titstorm.

The goal of the operation – instigated by the cyber-activist group Anonymous – was to make those sites inaccessible and make them crash under an avalanche of requests to the server, in order to express their resistance to Minister Conroy’s plan to impose Internet filters and embarrass the government.

Slayo admitted that he has used an IRC channel (of which he was the operator) to call users to participate in the operation and to relay directives on how to do it from the main organizers of the action, including the main organizer – an American that goes by the handle “Pulsar”.

According to the Sydney Morning Herald, Slayo’s lawyer tried to minimize his role in the operation saying that he only forwarded directives and didn’t participate in the attacks.

Slayo’s sentencing is scheduled for next month.