Hacker Arrested By FBI Married To Campaign Staffer Of Former Congresswoman Katie Hill

A hacker arrested by the FBI Friday morning is married to a campaign staffer of former Congresswoman Katie Hill, officials said.

Arthur Jan Dam, 32, was arrested on federal charges stemming from a series of distributed denial-of-service – or DDoS – attacks on a website for a candidate who was campaigning for a California congressional seat, not named by prosecutors, according to the United States Attorney’s Office.

Although the U.S. Attorney’s Office and the FBI are unable to confirm the campaign which was hacked, the other candidate in the 2018 Democratic primary for CA-25 was Brian Caforio.

The Santa Monica man was taken into custody pursuant to a criminal complaint filed Wednesday that charges him with one count of intentionally damaging and attempting to damage a protected computer, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

Dam is married to Kelsey O’Hara who was employed by Hill, according to the complaint.

The FBI has not uncovered any evidence that Hill or Dam’s wife orchestrated or were involved in the series of cyberattacks, according to prosecutors.

Dam allegedly staged four cyberattacks in April and May of 2018 that took down the candidate’s website for a total of 21 hours, according to the U.S Attorney’s Office.

“The victim reported suffering losses, including website downtime, a reduction in campaign donations, and time spent by campaign staff and others conducting critical incident response,” according to the affidavit in support of the criminal complaint.

The victim further reported spending $27,000 to $30,000 to respond to the attacks, and the candidate believes the attacks contributed to the loss in the primary election in June 2018.

“Law enforcement at all levels has pledged to ensure the integrity of every election,” said United States Attorney Nick Hanna. “We will not tolerate interference with computer systems associated with candidates or voting. Cases like this demonstrate our commitment to preserving our democratic system.”

The investigation outlined in the affidavit found that the cyberattacks all originated from one Amazon Web Services (AWS) account, which Dam controlled, and the four attacks corresponded to logins into that AWS account from either Dam’s residence or his workplace.

Furthermore, Dam had conducted “extensive research” on both the victim and cyberattacks, the complaint alleges.

“Today’s arrest shows the FBI’s commitment to hold accountable anyone who interferes with an American’s right to vote or who deprives a candidate the right to compete fairly in an election,” said Paul Delacourt, the Assistant Director in Charge of the FBI’s Los Angeles Field Office. “As part of our mission to defend the democratic process, the FBI is equipped with the expertise to respond to allegations of election interference; whether by fraud, intimidation or – as in this case – cyber intrusions.”

DDoS attacks typically are accomplished by flooding the targeted computer with superfluous requests in an attempt to overload systems and prevent some or all legitimate requests from being fulfilled, according to prosecutors.

After the third cyberattack, the victim increased cybersecurity measures and retained a website security company, but that was not enough to prevent a final disruption to the campaign’s website just one week before the primary election.

Dam was arrested Friday morning after surrendering to FBI agents at the United States Courthouse in Downtown Los Angeles.

If he were to be convicted of the charge of intentionally damaging and attempting to damage a protected computer, Dam would face a statutory maximum sentence of 10 years in federal prison.

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