5 years ago... Clinton holds hacker war talks

15.02.2000: US President Bill Clinton is meeting with executives from 20 internet companies today as the crisis over denial-of-service attacks continues.

The meeting will include representatives from some of the companies affected by last week's attacks - including eBay and Yahoo! - along with technology firms like Cisco.

The FBI is continuing its investigation into the attacks, with evidence emerging that computers at the University of California and Stanford were used in last week's blitz. The computers were hacked into and remote software installed, thereby making them part of a distributed network of machines sending material to the targeted server.

15.02.2005: The trail eventually led to one of the most high-profile computer crime arrests in recent years when the Canadian Mounted Police finally caught up with a 16-year-old known only by his internet pseudonym 'MafiaBoy'.

The denial-of-service attacks on Amazon, CNN, Dell, eBay, and Yahoo!, which lasted 165 hours over five days, were estimated to have caused millions of dollars in damage and losses.

MafiaBoy, who was just 14 at the time of the attacks, eventually pleaded guilty to 56 charges and received just eight months in a youth detention centre and a $160 fine – which the youth's defence lawyer denounced as excessive, even though his client had faced a possible two years in jail.

Five years later and denial-of-service attacks and hacker/virus writer punishments are still hotly debated and contentious issues. Just last year organised crime gangs were behind a spate of denial-of-service blackmail attacks on UK online betting and gambling sites