FBI agents arrested Kevin George Poe of Manchester, Conn., for launching DDoS attacks against GeneSimmons.com over a five-day period in October 2010.

A federal grand jury in Los Angeles indicted Poe last week on two counts – conspiracy and unauthorized impairment of a protected computer. If convicted on both counts, he faces a maximum sentence of 15 years in federal prison.

According to the FBI, Poe and others linked to Anonymous conducted a DDoS attack against Simmons’ computer systems, sending tens of thousands of electronic requests designed to overload the computer server and render the website useless. Poe used a favorite Anonymous software tool – a low orbit ion cannon, which is a computer program that is used to send extremely large numbers of packets over a network in an attempt to overwhelm a target computer.

Commenting on the arrest, Mike Paquette, chief strategy officer with Corero Network Security, said that the incident “once again sheds light on the increasing amount of DDoS attacks by criminals and hacktivists that are sometime out for financial gain or just looking to make a political or ideological statement.”

Paquette warned that DDoS attacks are becoming more sophisticated, targeting the application layer instead of bombarding the computer system with network packets.

“In 2012, IT administrators should update their business continuity plans and improve their overall security posture in preparation. The negative impact of business and productivity losses makes it essential to be diligent in preparation”, he advised.