Pennsylvania resident David Bukoski received a five-year suspended sentence for running a custom DDoS attack service.
According to journalist Brian Krebs, Quantum Stresser has been operating since at least 2012 and had about 80 thousand subscribers. In 2018, about 50 thousand cyber attacks were carried out using the service around the world. Its website (quantumstress [.] net), along with fourteen other services, was dismantled in an international law enforcement operation in December 2018.
Since Quantum Stresser is one of the oldest services of its kind, due to long impunity, 24-year-old Bukoski has apparently lost his guard and got caught on a petty mistake - ordering his favorite bacon and chicken pizza from the same email address that the service was registered to.
According to the Alaska prosecutor's office, Bukoski's email address was blacklisted by several companies, whose services he used to advertise his service and receive payments. The letters sent to Bukoski demanding an explanation of the reasons for blacklisting him helped law enforcement establish his real name, and ordering pizza at home revealed his home address.
While the case of Quantum Stresser seems like something out of the ordinary, it has happened in the past. For example, in 2012, one of the operators of the sensational banking Trojan Zeus, which stole tens of millions of dollars, made exactly the same mistake. The location of the Ukrainian Yuriy Konovalenko, who at that time was 30 years old, was also identified after he ordered pizza on the Internet.
