Man arrested for 'biggest ever' cyberattack

THE HAGUE - Agence France-Presse

The 35 year old identified only as S.K. was arrested in Barcelona. REUTERS photo

A Dutchman has been arrested in Spain in connection with last month's unprecedented cyberattack that reportedly slowed down the Internet, the Dutch prosecution service said. The 35 year old identified only as S.K. was arrested in Barcelona and the house where he was staying searched by Spanish police, said a statement.

"He is suspected of involvement in the attack and so the prosecution service asked for his arrest," spokesman Wim de Bruin told AFP on April 27.

Last month's attack targeted Spamhaus, a Geneva-based volunteer group that publishes spam blacklists used by networks to filter out unwanted email, and led to cyberspace congestion. Spamhaus blamed the attack on Dutch web-hosting service Cyberbunker.

A source close to the investigation said that suspect S.K. was Sven Olaf Kamphuis, who acted as a spokesman for Cyberbunker at the time of the attack. Kamphuis describes himself on his Facebook page as Minister of Telecommunications and Foreign Affairs for the Cyberbunker Republic.

De Bruin declined to speculate on whether further arrests would be made.

Computers, storage devices and mobile phones were seized during the Barcelona raid. "S. K. is suspected of an unprecedented attack on non-profit organisation Spamhaus," the statement said."So-called DDoS attacks were last month also carried out on Spamhaus partners in the US, the Netherlands and the UK," it said. Distributed denial of service attacks (DDoS) essentially bombard sites with traffic in order to disrupt.

Last month's attack was described as the most powerful ever seen and slowed web traffic. S. K. is expected to be handed over to the Dutch authorities soon, the prosecution service said.