An Estonian virus writer has been jailed for two and a half years for creating a Windows worm family that launched denial of service attacks on the websites of a local insurance firm and ISP.
Artur Boiko, 44, was convicted by a jury of creating the Allaple worm and sentenced to two years and seven months following a trial. Boiko pleaded not guilty but prosecutors persuaded the jury that he became a malware author in late 2006 to seek revenge against insurance firm IF following a dispute over a rejected car accident insurance claim.

The Allaple worm family spread fairly widely across the net and launched a denial of service attack from infected machines against three pre-programmed targets: if.ee,
 www.online.if.ee (the insurance firm's customer portal) and 
www.starman.ee (an Estonian ISP).

The fairly basic SYN Flood attacks launched by Allaple nonetheless had a debilitating effect on the targeted websites during the early part of 2007, as explained in a March 2007 blog entry by the SANS Institute's Internet Storm Centre here. This run of attacks predated much larger attacks on Estonian government and bank websites that accompanied the relocation of Soviet-era war memorials and graves in April 2007.

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