STEVE SLAYO sat glued to his bedroom computer into the early morning hours, stewing over plans by the Communications Minister, Stephen Conroy, to impose filters on internet content.

Slayo wrote a protest letter to Mr Conroy that he never posted, but the bright VCE student later flexed his considerable computer skills in helping to launch damaging ''hacker'' attacks on Australian government websites.

Student with a grudge ... Steve Slayo with his girlfriend Lisa outside court yesterday.

A court yesterday heard Slayo, 19, incited ''distributed denial of service attacks'' organised by an American mastermind on government websites that included Mr Conroy's and then prime minister Kevin Rudd's.

Melbourne Magistrates Court heard that the attacks last February were designed to make certain websites inaccessible by flooding the host server with requests to establish connections.