Justin Payne, Distributed Denial of Service, Missouri 2014

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Cyber Attack on Police Union Website Lands Man in Jail

A man’s attempt to take down the St. Louis County Police Association website through a distributed denial of service attack has landed him in hot water. Justin Payne pleaded guilty to the crime and faces up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

According to court documents, on December 2, 2014, the group ‘Rebel But Gangster Black Rebels,’ aka RBG Black Rebels, promoted the cyber-attack against the SLCPA website on Twitter. An investigation by the FBI determined that the RBG Black Rebels’ Twitter account is solely operated and held by the defendant, Justin Payne.

The cyber-attack was in conjunction with the group Operation Ferguson, which claimed affiliation with the group Anonymous. On December 2, 2014, messages were sent out on Twitter by the Defendant containing a link for a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack on the SLCPA Website.

A DDoS attack is an attempt to make a machine or network resource unavailable to its intended users. The program distributed by the defendant exploited this limit by initiating as many connections with SLCPA website as possible to fill up the bandwidth. This attack on the SLPCA website actually shut down the website.

On January 27, 2014, a review of Payne’s Twitter account revealed messages associated with killing law enforcement officers. Through investigation, FBI agents determined that Justin Payne worked at the V.A. facility located at One Archives Way, St. Louis, Missouri.

After Payne was arrested for the DDoS attack, the FBI received a search warrant for Payne’s car. During the search of Payne’s trunk, agents located a glass container containing a flammable liquid mix of gasoline, water and ethanol, which was later determined to be an improvised incendiary device, commonly known as a Molotov cocktail.

Payne pleaded guilty to one felony count of possession of an unregistered firearm and one count of damage to a protected computer before United States District Judge Henry Autrey. Sentencing has been set for December 7, 2015.

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