The teenager, who cannot be named under Canadian law, yesterday pleaded not guilty to all charges. These include distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks in February on the web sites of CNN, Amazon.com, eBay and Dell.
In a DDoS attack, a programmer secretly embeds software into hundreds or thousands of computers. At a designated command or time, infected host computers send messages to a target computer. The volume of messages arriving over the internet effectively cripples the target server, making the web site inaccessible to other internet users.
Police in the US and Canada identified the person responsible as someone using the name Mafiaboy in chat sites and on internet message boards.
If convicted, the maximum sentence the teenager can face under Canadian law is two years in a youth detention centre.