New Jersey Man Pleads Guilty For Hacking Church Of Scientology Websites

Los Angeles, CA (AHN) - Authorities have charged a New Jersey teenager of alleged "cyber attack" when he tried to bring down the servers of the Church of Scientology Web sites early this year.

Dmitriy Guzner, 18, Verona, N.J., admitted that he is a member of the Anonymous, an underground, anti-Scientology group, which led protests against the church across the country.

The U.S. District Attorney filed the charges against Guzner last Friday at the United States District Court in Los Angeles.

Guzner agreed to plead guilty to computer hacking and in his role in the distributed denial of service attack against the Scientology websites. Large amount of malicious Internet traffic was directed to the church's websites disabling the servers to handle the high volume of hits. The attack made the websites unavailable to legitimate users trying to reach the sites.

The federal cybercrimes task force was able to track Guzner. He could serve ten years in prison.