Dutchman Arrested in Spain for Spamhaus Web Attacks

BBC reports that police officials in Spain have arrested a Dutchman allegedly responsible for the Spamhaus web attacks that "almost broke the Internet."

A 35-year-old Dutchman has been arrested in Barcelona by Spanish police officials for allegedly being involved in the Spamhaus web attacks that "almost broke the Internet." While officials didn't confirm the name of the man in their statement, they referred to him as "S.K". However, a BBC report confirms the man to be Sven Kamphuis, the owner and manager of Dutch hosting firm Cyberbunker, which has been implicated in the attack.

"Spamhaus is delighted at the news that an individual has been arrested and is grateful to the Dutch police for the resources they have made available and the way they have worked with us," said a Spamhaus spokesman.

"Spamhaus remains concerned about the way network resources are being exploited as they were in this incident due to the failure of network providers to implement best practice in security," he added.

During the attack, Spamhaus servers were hit with a huge amount of data through a technique known as Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS). Here, a website's server is attacked by sending it large amounts of data, larger than it can handle.

In a statement, the Dutch public prosecutor said that the Dutchman, who it only identifies as "SK", was "suspected of unprecedented heavy attacks" on Spamhaus.

Arrangements to send Kamphuis to the Netherlands should take place soon. According to a spokesman, the Dutch authorities are co-operating with British and American authorities on the investigation into the attack.