A 20-year-old computer hacker reported in custody in Israel may be "Deepsy," the hacker who threatened to hit a number of adult Websites and Web operations with mass denial of service attacks over two months ago unless he was paid off.
Vladimir Pavlov is being held by Israeli authorities as a suspect in an estimated $100,000 worth of computer blackmail crime. But speculation has abounded around the adult Internet that Pavlov may be "Deepsy," a hacker who emerged in July threatening adult Webmasters with hack activity.
"Deepsy," apparently began with a June 30 threat on the GFY message board, threatening to cripple GFY down "within 20 minutes" and ordering board administrators to contact him for more instructions, according to a news report shortly after the incident.
He called off the first attack an hour later but repeated his threat to GFY. And, within a week, "Deepsy" had threatened several other adult Websites and probably hit a few with denial of service attacks of varying degrees.
Israeli authorities arrested Pavlov related to a company called Cyber Trend Corporation, accusing him of blackmailing them and then allegedly breaking into their systems to steal members' credit and personal information even after the company allegedly paid what he demanded.
Cyber Trend is said to be a West Coast-based company who owns a number of adult Websites run from Las Vegas servers. Those sites recently complained about a hacker, possibly from Israel, who demanded protection money from some of the sites and reportedly attacked them.
Reports from Israeli media suggested Cyber Trend's assailant, believed to be Pavlov, gave the company a name and bank account number in Hapoalim, said to be a Beersheba bank. The company in turn paid the hacker thousands to no avail, since some of the attacks continued, the Israeli reporting said. The hacker also reportedly stole a Cyber Trend database, provoking the company to call the FBI's computer crime lab, which in turn brought in a former Israeli police computer crime expert to help trace him.
Ironically enough, not long after GFY's message boards included a discussion on the Pavlov arrest and whether or not he was "Deepsy," GFY was attacked. "We have temporarily changed this page due to a spam attack," said a notice on the GFY home page. "If you received a spam pointing to this domain, it did not originate from us. Report abuse complaints to us at [email protected]"
AVN.com will have more on this story as it develops.
