Wisconsin trucker sentenced in Koch cyberattack

Wisconsin trucker sentenced to probation, $183K restitution for cyberattack on Koch Industries

WICHITA, Kan. (AP) -- A Wisconsin truck driver who joined a cyberattack on Wichita-based Koch Industries was sentenced Monday to two years' probation and ordered to pay $183,000 in restitution for the onslaught that briefly took the company's website offline.

Eric Rosol, 38, of Black Creek, Wis., was sentenced in U.S. District Court for taking part in the cyber-attack on Koch Industries. He pleaded guilty earlier to a misdemeanor count of accessing a protected computer. Prosecutors agreed in Rosol's plea deal to recommend a sentence at the low end of federal guidelines.

Koch's website was offline for about 15 minutes during the 2011 attack organized by the hacking collective Anonymous.

The parties agreed that the direct loss from the attack was less than $5,000. But Koch Industries, one of the largest private companies in the U.S., contends that when it learned of the planned attack, it hired a consulting group at a cost of $183,000 to protect its websites and, if any attack was successful, to minimize its effects, according to the plea deal.

In his plea agreement, Rosol admitted that on Feb. 28, 2011, he participated for about one minute in the "Dedicated Denial of Service" Internet attack on the web server for Kochind.com. The indictment alleges that Anonymous asked conspirators in February 2011 to launch a cyberattack that sent a high volume of repeated requests to a Koch website. Numerous conspirators complied, and the company's website crashed.

As part of his agreement with prosecutors, Rosol also agreed to forfeit the computer used in the cyberattack. He also agreed that as part of any probation he would not contact the victim or any website hosted by Koch Industries, Angel Soft or Georgia Pacific.