Hitting the Books: How hackers turned cybercrime into a commercial service

As anyone who regularly games online can attest, DDoS (dedicated denial of service) attacks are an irritatingly common occurrence on the internet. Drawing on the combined digital might of a geographically diffuse legion of zombified PCs, hackers are able to swamp game servers and prevent players from logging on for hours or days at a time. The problem has metastasized in recent years as enterprising hackers have begun to package their botnets and spamming tools into commercial offerings, allowin...