A Russian man allegedly responsible for denial of service attacks on Amazon.com was arrested in Cyprus. Dmitry Olegovich Zubakha was indicted last year for his role in two June 2008 attacks, which used a botnet and left Amazon's US site offline for a total of several hours. According to the US Department of Justice, Zubakha and another hacker claimed responsibility in a forum; they may also have carried out similar attacks on Priceline.com and eBay. Zubakha is being charged with "conspiracy to intentionally cause damage without authorization to a protected computer" and two counts of "intentionally causing damage to a protected computer resulting in a loss of more than $5,000." He's also being charged with identity theft in a separate case involving stolen credit card numbers.

Department of Justice attorney Jenny Durkan had strong words regarding Zubakha. "These cyber bandits do serious harm to our businesses and their customers... This defendant could not hide in cyberspace, and I congratulate the international law enforcement agencies who tracked him down and made this arrest." Considering how relatively simple and common denial of service attacks are, however, we're curious how many people will eventually end up being arrested for attacks like those on Amazon or Sony.