Story highlights
Kevin George Poe, 24, of Connecticut is accused of being an Anonymous hacker
He allegedly attacked KISS band member GeneSimmons.com in October 2010
Poe allegedly overwhelmed the website's server with electronic requests
A 24-year-old Connecticut man affiliated with the Anonymous hacking group was arrested and charged Tuesday with electronically attacking the website belonging to Gene Simmons of the rock band KISS, authorities said.
Kevin George Poe, of Manchester, Connecticut, made an initial appearance in U.S. District Court in Hartford on Tuesday, and a judge ordered him released in lieu of a $10,000 bond, federal prosecutors said.
Poe is charged with two counts: conspiracy and unauthorized impairment of a protected computer, prosecutors said.
He was ordered to appear in federal court in Los Angeles at an undetermined date, prosecutors said. The servers to GeneSimmons.com, the website belonging to the KISS band member, are based in Los Angeles, said Thom Mrozek, spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s office in Los Angeles.
Poe’s federal public defender didn’t respond to messages late Tuesday.
Using the screen name of spydr101, Poe joined other persons linked to Anonymous and allegedly conducted a “distributed denial of service” attack against Simmons’ website during a five-day period in October 2010.
That attack allegedly involved sending tens of thousands of electronic requests designed to overload the website and shut it down, a prosecutor’s statement said.
Poe allegedly used the computer program Low Orbit Ion Cannon – “a favorite software tool of the Anonymous collective” – to send a high volume of “packets” or requests in an effort to overwhelm the server, prosecutors said.
If convicted of both charges, Poe could face up to 15 years in federal prison, prosecutors said.