Hacker From Oklahoma Pleads Guilty In DDoS Attack Case

Benjamin Earnest Nichols, a 37-year-old from Oklahoma City, has pleaded guilty to waging a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack against mcgrewsecurity.com in 2010. Nichols has not been sentenced yet, but could face 10 years in federal prison and a $250,000 fine, DOJ reports.

In 2010, Nichols, a member of the hacking group Electronic Tribulation Army (ETA), confessed to attacking a protected computer system in the mcgrewsecurity.com incident, causing losses up to $6,500.  

According to DOJ, Jesse McGraw, the leader of ETA hacking group and ex-security guard at Medical Plaza in Dallas, was charged with hacking into protected computers in the medical facility, and received a sentence of more than nine years in federal prison.

After McGraw's arrest, Nichols took offense with comments about the case posted on mcgrewsecurity.com blog. He then harrassed online the owner of the mcgrewsecurity.com website, RWM, by setting up what DoJ described as a "derogatory website" and built a bot to auto-respond with insults and profanity to RWM's Internet Relay Chat.

The FBI is investigating the case.

See more on the case in the Department of Justice release.