Two Anchorage men, including court worker, indicted for hacking

ANCHORAGE (AP) -- Two Anchorage men, including a federal court worker, have been indicted by a federal grand jury for allegedly hacking into computer systems in two separate incidents.

Scott Dennis, the computer security officer and system administrator for the federal court system in Alaska, was indicted Tuesday for allegedly interfering with a government-owned communications system, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office in Anchorage.

Dennis allegedly initiated at least one of five attacks on the e-mail system operated by the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York.

According to federal prosecutors, the system was attacked by a flood of inappropriate e-mail five times during December and January. The system had to be taken out of operation, reconfigured and brought back on line.

Prosecutors say the attacks came from computers traced to Dennis.

The case was investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation with help from Internet Alaska and GCI.

In the second incident, Timothy O'Dell of Anchorage was indicted for allegedly causing damage to a computer system that hosted the Web site for the Alaska Commercial Company. According to the indictment, O'Dell's hacking resulted in at least $5,000 in losses.