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SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — Federal prosecutors have charged an Israeli man they say tried to hack into the servers at Overstock.com, causing an estimated $450,000 in damage.
Kirill Alekseyevich Chudinov is accused of repeatedly launching cyber-attacks on the Utah-based online retailer's servers between September 2014 and February 2015, according to charging documents unsealed this week.
Chudinov is charged with fraud activity connected with computers following an FBI investigation. Chudinov's attorney, Loren Washburn, was not immediately available for comment.
Chudinov was arrested earlier this month at an airport in New York, and he was allowed out on $50,000 bond. A federal judge in Utah is allowing him to travel within the United States.
Overstock.com Senior Vice President of Technology Carter Lee said in a statement that the company blocked several denial-of-service attacks in 2014.
This type of attack is aimed at preventing legitimate users from accessing a website or network service. The attacker sends high volumes of traffic or data to the target network until the network is overloaded. It is generally carried out by one computer or one central location of computers and usually results in a very slow network performance or a website being unavailable or inaccessible.
"Unfortunately this type of occurrence is increasingly common in today's world, which is why Overstock.com remains vigilant," Lee said in the statement.
On one day in October 2014, investigators documented 12,000 IP addresses connecting to Overstock.com from the same shopping cart, charging documents show.
FBI Investigators linked the activity to Chudinov by getting subscription information for the email addresses linked to the shopping cart. They also found an article they say he wrote, titled, "How to bring down every third site from your laptop."
Chudinov is set to be back in federal court in Salt Lake City on Sept. 3.
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