Christopher Doyon (born 1964), also known as "Commander X", is an American homeless

hacktivist Hacktivism (or hactivism; a portmanteau of '' hack'' and ''activism''), is the use of computer-based techniques such as hacking as a form of civil disobedience to promote a political agenda or social change. A form of Internet activism with roo ...

and a self-described leader of hacker group

Anonymous Anonymous may refer to: * Anonymity, the state of an individual's identity, or personally identifiable information, being publicly unknown ** Anonymous work, a work of art or literature that has an unnamed or unknown creator or author * Anonym ...

First arrest

Doyon was arrested in September 2011 for using the

High Orbit Ion Cannon High Orbit Ion Cannon (HOIC) is an open-source network stress testing and denial-of-service attack application designed to attack as many as 256 URLs at the same time. It was designed to replace the Low Orbit Ion Cannon which was developed by Pr ...

to make a

DDoS attack In computing, a denial-of-service attack (DoS attack) is a cyberattack in which the perpetrator seeks to make a machine or network resource unavailable to its intended users by temporarily or indefinitely disrupting services of a host conne ...

on servers belonging to Santa Cruz County, California. The attack, which occurred in December 2010, was triggered by a new law affecting the homeless community of which Doyon was a part, and it affected Santa Cruz servers for just 30 minutes. The government alleged a few thousand dollars in damages for investigation and remediation, clearing threshold of the

Computer Fraud and Abuse Act The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1986 (CFAA) is a United States cybersecurity bill that was enacted in 1986 as an amendment to existing computer fraud law (), which had been included in the Comprehensive Crime Control Act of 1984. Prior ...

and making the DDoS a federal crime. Helped by his pro-bono attorney, Jay Leiderman, Doyon jumped bail in February 2012 and fled across the border into Canada. He spent around seven years issuing press releases, hanging out on Twitter, and writing a

self-published Self-publishing is an author-driven publication of any media without the involvement of a third-party publisher. Since the advent of the internet, self-published usually depends upon digital platforms and print-on-demand technology, ranging fr ...

memoir, talking to journalists and appearing in documentaries.

Second arrest

On June 11, 2021, several armed, uniformed, Mexican men identifying themselves as DEA agents attempted to gain entry to the community where Doyon lived in

Mexico City, Mexico Mexico City is the capital city, capital and List of cities in Mexico, largest city of Mexico, as well as the List of North American cities by population, most populous city in North America. It is one of the most important cultural and finan ...

but were turned away. They returned dressed as civilians, with representatives from the US Embassy, scaled the walls of the compound and took Doyon away in the early evening. This was confirmed by a press release from the US Attorney for the Northern District of California, where Doyon was imprisoned, though no details were provided. In 2022 Doyon pled guilty to his 2011 charges.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Doyon, Chris 1964 births Living people Anonymous (hacker group) activists