First published: 25th September 2012
Tse Man-lai Ernest pleaded not guilty in the District Court on 24th Septermber to two counts of obtaining access to a computer with criminal or dishonest intent in connection with Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange news website (HKExnews) in August 2011. Mr Tse is a Director of Pacswitch Globe Telecom, a company that provides internet and telephony services. Pacswitch was licensed as an External Telecommunications Services (ETS) Operator by OFCA in 2010.
The prosecution claims that the DDoS attack was launched from a computer at Tse's mother's home, and a blog post titled, "Ernest Networking teaching", that demonstrated the attack on HKExnews, asked people to subscribe to the author's DDoS prevention method and included the web address of Pacswitch Globe Telecom.
The prosecution accuses Tse of launching the attacks and writing the blog post to promote the business of his company.
Pacswitch offers "1Gbps Internetional Bandwidth" (sic) and an Email Marketing Service that is more expensive for non-profit and educational users than it is for business users. The website does not currently mention security or DDoS prevention services.
