OKLAHOMA CITY, OK – David Chelsey Goodyear, 44, of El Segundo, California, has been sentenced to 26 months in prison for directing distributed-denial-of-service (DDoS) cyber attacks against two websites owned by Oklahoma telescope retailer Astronomics in August 2016.
A federal jury convicted Goodyear of directing a DDoS cyber attack, in which the perpetrator floods the victim’s computer with useless information from botnets—large clusters of connected devices infected with malware and controlled remotely—and prevents access by legitimate users.
The evidence showed that Astronomics operated the world’s largest free astronomy forum on the internet, called Cloudy Nights, and that Goodyear had been a registered user on the site under a variety of aliases. Each of Goodyear’s usernames and his primary IP address had been banned for violating the terms of service of Cloudy Nights, including sending threats to other users, administrators, and moderators.
On August 13, 2016, Goodyear attempted to access Cloudy Nights as ‘JamesSober’ but his access to the online community was denied because his ‘JamesSober’ account had been banned on August 9, 2016. Goodyear then posted messages on Cloudy Nights under a new alias, ‘HawaiiAPUser,’ including pornography and profanity directed at Astronomics and the volunteer administrators and moderators of Cloudy Nights. In the posts, he threatened that he would ‘talk with [his] contacts and just DOS this site as well as A55tronomics.’
The DDoS attacks against Astronomics and Cloudy Nights began that night and continued intermittently until the end of August 2016, when law enforcement interviewed Goodyear, who admitted he was responsible for the attacks.
On February 15, 2018, a jury returned a guilty verdict after two days of trial. On December 3, 2018, Chief U.S. District Judge Joe Heaton sentenced Goodyear to 26 months in the federal Bureau of Prisons, followed by three years of supervised release. He was ordered to pay $27,352.51 in restitution to Astronomics, which represents lost profits and mitigation costs. The court also fined him $2,500.00.
According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, the sentence is the result of an investigation by the FBI, with support from the United States Secret Service Electronic Crimes Task Force in Los Angeles, which includes personnel from the Los Angeles Police Department. The case was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorneys K. McKenzie Anderson and William E. Farrior.
Key Facts
- State: Oklahoma
- Category: Cybercrime
- Source: DOJ Press Release â†â€â€
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