According to court filings, Mitchell Frost launched the distributed denial of service attacks from a 'botnet' network of hacked computers he controlled between March 7 and March 12, 2007. Frost is also accused of using his botnet to steal information including usernames, passwords and credit card numbers from compromised computers.

He was charged Friday on one count each of damaging a protected computer system and possessing unauthorized access devices.

Frost was a first-year student at the University of Akron at the time of the attacks and allegedly used the school's computer network to access the botnet, built up between August 2006 and March 2007. Federal agents raided Frost's dorm room on March 28, 2007, about three weeks after the attacks, and found nearly 3,000 illegally obtained usernames and passwords, court filings state.

The attacks occurred as interest was starting to build for the 2008 presidential election, and one of Frost's alleged targets was the Web site used to promote Giuliani's presidential campaign.

Another alleged victim was the University of Akron itself, which had its computer network knocked offline for eight-and-a-half hours on March 14, 2007. "Frost apparently did not attack the University of Akron specifically, but rather intended to attack a gaming server which happened to be housed within the University of Akron network," court filings state. It cost the university more than US$10,000 to clean up the mess.