B.C. man charged in alleged ‘spambot’ attack on video streaming platform
COQUITLAM, B.C. — A British Columbia man has been charged with mischief after a U.S.-based social media platform was allegedly flooded with thousands of spam messages, effectively shutting down many of its channels.
Brandan Lukus Apple of Coquitlam was charged Dec. 1 with one count of mischief to computer data after the alleged cyberattack.
The 20-year-old man is also named in a B.C. Supreme Court civil lawsuit filed last April by Twitch Interactive Inc. that alleges he was behind an attack by so-called spambots last year, where unsolicited messages flooded more than a thousand of its channels, disabling the company’s chat feature.
The Twitch website says the company is the world’s leading social video service using members to stream video games to 100 million viewers who can take part in game culture through real-time chats and discussions.