Gene Simmons' Website Crashed by Connecticut Hacker

FBI Special Agents arrested a 24-year-old Manchester man Tuesday and charged him with attacking and shutting down the official website of Kiss frontman Gene Simmons.

Kevin George Poe was arrested this morning at the federal courthouse in Hartford on charges of conspiracy and unauthorized impairment of a protected computer for his alleged involvement with the Anonymous hacking group. The arrest was initiated by the U.S. Attorney in central California.

Poe, who goes by the screen name spydr101, and other hackers linked to the Anonymous group allegedly conducted a distributed denial of service attack against genesimmons.com over a five-day period in October of 2010, according to court documents.

Poe is alleged to have used a Low Orbit Ion Cannon, a popular software tool among members of the Anonymous hacking group, to send a very large number of requests to Simmons’ website in a short period of time, effectively overwhelming the website’s ability to handle the requests and forcing it to crash.

Poe appeared before a U.S. District Court judge in Hartford today, where he was released on a $10,000 bond and ordered to appear in federal court in Los Angeles on a date that has yet to be scheduled. If convicted of both charges, Poe could face a maximum penalty of 15 years in federal prison.