This reply came in response to my reading him several posts that he’d made on Hackforums not 24 hours earlier that strongly suggested he was still in the business of knocking Web sites offline: In a Feb. “I don’t see what a wall of text can really tell you about what someone does in real life though,” said Rasbora, whose real-life identity is being withheld because he’s a minor. Despite his insistence that he’s never launched DDoS attacks, Rasbora did eventually allow that someone reading his posts on Hackforums might conclude that he was actively involved in DDoS attacks for hire. Rasbora’s most recent project just happens to be gathering, maintaining huge “top quality” lists of servers that can be used to launch amplification attacks online. Here’s what I wrote about Sergiy at the time: That 2014 story declined to quote Rasbora by name because he was a minor, but his father seemed alarmed enough about my inquiry that he insisted his son speak with me about the matter. If you think that is any kind of illegal work, please, let me know.” “I also have major concern what my 15 yo son doing. “I am writing you after our phone conversation just to confirm that you may call evening time/weekend to talk to my son Sergio regarding to your reasons,” Peter Usatyuk wrote in an email to this author on Feb.
I phoned Usatyuk the elder because Sergiy’s alter egos had been posting evidence on Hackforums and elsewhere that he’d just hit with a 200 Gbps DDoS attack, which was then considered a fairly impressive DDoS assault. Booter Master” - was heavily involved in helping to launch crippling DDoS attacks. I did so because a brief amount of sleuthing on Hackforumsnet revealed that his then 15-year-old son Sergiy - who at the time went by the nicknames “ Rasbora” and “ Mr. In February 2014, KrebsOnSecurity reached out to Usatyuk’s father Peter Usatyuk, an assistant professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago. But Usatyuk’s involvement in the DDoS-for-hire space very much predates that period. Justice Department press release on the guilty plea says Usatyuk - operating under the hacker aliases “ Andrew Quez” and “ Brian Martinez” - admitted developing, controlling and operating the aforementioned booter services from around August 2015 through November 2017. Most of these have since been deleted.Ī U.S. Some of Rasbora’s posts on hackforumsnet prior to our phone call in 2014.