ABSTRACT
Mafiaboy was a teenager hailing from West Island, Quebec who initiated a number of highly publicized denial-of-service (DoS) attacks in February 2000. The attacks were launched against a number of large commercial websites, such as Fifa.com, Yahoo!, E*TRADE, Amazon.com, eBay, Dell Inc., and CNN. Mafiaboy likewise initiated a number of failed attacks against 9 of the 13 root-name computer systems. Per the Yankee Group, the estimated costs of the malicious attack amounted to $1.2 billion, and the attack on Amazon cost between $200,000 and $300,000 per hour due to lost business transactions. Loss of customer goodwill, corporate reputation, and public trust may have been even greater at the time, but in 2016, the adverse impacts caused by Mafiaboy mean nothing and have not adversely affected online business for these corporations in the long run.
