Distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks are not hypothetical possibilities. Indeed, they have been bringing down Web sites for quite some time.
Most recently, two men in Britain have been sent to prison for their DDoS attacks perpetrated on PayPal and other sites, according to InformationWeek.
The InformationWeek article notes that six people were arrested in connection with these DDoS attacks. Three of them ultimately were charged under the United Kingdom’s Computer Misuse Act of 1990. Of these three, the head of the group received a prison sentence of 18 months, another was sentenced to seven months in jail, and the third was sentenced to six months in jail which was suspended for two years while he was ordered to serve 100 hours of community service.