Special FBI Agents arrested a Manchester man Tuesday for bringing down GeneSimmons.com, a web site operated by the frontman for the rock band KISS.
Kevin George Poe, 24, who used the screen name spydr101, was taken into custody without incident Tuesday at the federal courthouse in Hartford, according to federal prosecutors.
Poe was accused of launching a denial of service attack on Simmons’ site and was released on a $10,000 bond. He was ordered to appear in federal court in Los Angeles, but no court date has been scheduled.
The arrest comes after a federal grand jury in Los Angeles returned an indictment last week that accused Poe of being affiliated with the Anonymous hacking group.
The indictment charges Poe with two counts – conspiracy and unauthorized impairment of a protected computer.
The attack occurred during a five day period in October 2010 and was done using what is called a “Low Orbit Ion Cannon,” which is an open source computer program that sends extremely large amounts of packets or requests over a network in an attempt to overwhelm a target computer.
The indictment says that “Anonymous would instruct its members and affiliates to conduct a DDoS attack against specific websites or IP addresses and would make available, through Anonymous affiliated websites and IRC channels, the LOIC program to be used in the course of the attack.”
The attack would then be announced on sites such as myce.com, softpedia.com, and Techworld.com
The indictment doesn’t say why Simmons’ site was targeted for the attack.
