When his IRC hacking group disbanded after its leader disappeared Calce became a self-described “mercenary” in an ongoing IRC war. With everyone doing denial of service attacks he decided he's better “get suited-up” but there was only so much he could do with his Pentium 133 and a dial-up connection, often with 80 telnet windows open simultaneously. He decided to build a network of “slave” computers, controlled by a master computer, in early 2000.

“My original intention wasn't to go after Yahoo. I wanted a weapon of mass destruction to end the hacker war,” said Calce. “It wasn't about e-commerce. It was like a fight in a back alley that ended-up in a shopping mall.”

With his weapon constructed, Calce needed a test. It would have to be a site with lots of bandwidth and lots of users to be a true test, and at the time the obvious candidate was Yahoo.

“I figured if I'm going to run a test and see how effective my application was, why not go out with a bang with Yahoo?” said Calce. “I didn't think it was going to work against Yahoo, to be honest.”

He set a timer to launch the attack while he was at school, likely asleep at his desk. He was oblivious to what he'd wrought until he got home and saw the buzz online.