Computer hacker who Ddos attack company is jailed

An IT specialist who accessed the computer system of a company he had been previously dismissed from and caused an outage has been jailed. Vladimir Yanpolsky, 45 of Hungerford Square, Weybridge, was sentenced to three-and-a-half years’ imprisonment at Kingston Crown Court on Wednesday, 22 January, after being found guilty of an offence under section 3(1) of the Computer Misuse Act 1990 at the same court on 16 December, 2019. On 5 March 2017, a London-based IT services company experienced a critical system failure, and enquiries revealed that these had been caused by network intrusions from someone gaining access remotely. Suspicions turned to Yanpolsky, whose contract at the company had been terminated months before. Officers from the Met’s Cyber Crime Unit, analysed the IP addresses of computers that had accessed the company’s computer network around the time of the system failure, and several were subsequently linked to Yanpolsky’s home address and new place of work. Yanpolsky was arrested on 8 March 2017. He was interviewed and denied committing the offence, and was released on bail. Devices were seized; these would further link him to the offences. On 7 September 2018, Yanpolsky was charged with an offence under the Computer Misuse Act 1990. Detective Chief Inspector Kirsty Goldsmith from the Cyber Crime Unit said: “Yanpolsky used the specialist knowledge he had about a company he was fired from in acrimonious circumstances, and deliberately sabotaged its IT operations. Since his arrest, he has shown no remorse for the consequences of his actions. “I am proud of the tenacity, dedication and skill of the officers during a painstaking investigation, who presented strong technical evidence to the court leading to this conviction.”