Posted on 01/25/2006 5:35:35 AM PST by Calpernia
LOS ANGELES, CA, USA -- A US computer hacker on Monday pleaded guilty to hijacking around 400,000 computers, including military servers, and infecting them with malicious software.
In the first such prosecution of its kind, "botmaster" Jeanson Ancheta, 20, admitted infecting the computers with software that caused them to send spam, show ads and launch crippling attacks on Internet sites.
In federal court in Los Angeles, Ancheta admitted conspiring to violate both the Computer Fraud Abuse Act and an anti-spam law, to causing damage to US defense computers and to hacking into computers to commit fraud.
His plea comes after he sealed a deal with prosecutors agreeing to plead guilty in return for a shorter sentence of six to eight years in prison.
Ancheta is due to appear before US District Judge Gary Klausner for sentencing on May 1, but the judge has the power to impose a different sentence.
The youth was accused of infecting "armies" of computers and turning them into "bots" that are then used to launch destructive attacks on servers or send huge quantities of spam, or unwanted e-mail.
Ancheta then charged spammers for spreading their dubious wares over his hijacked network, prosecutors say.
Among the computers that he was accused of infecting with malicious software are computers at the Weapons Division of the sensitive US Naval Air Warfare Center in China Lake in California and some used by the Defense Information Systems Agency.
In pleading guilty, Ancheta agreed to pay about $15,000 in restitution to those two agencies.
He admitted that he was paid a total of $3,000 by clients for access to networks of the computers that he had infected by downloading malicious software.
In more than 30 separate transactions, he sold networks of up to 10,000 infected "bots" each, his plea agreement states.
According to the court papers, advertising service companies would pay Ancheta for each computer that he was able to infect with software that displays unsolicited ads to the user.
To continually grow his network of infected computers, Ancheta would have his "zombie" computers scan the Internet for vulnerable machines, documents stated.
Ancheta admitted generating roughly $60,000 in advertising affiliate proceeds for downloading the adware onto vulnerable computers.
In addition to paying restitution to the US government, Ancheta also agreed to forfeit his proceeds from the illegal hacking, including more than $60,000 in cash, a 1993 BMW luxury car and computer equipment.
ping
Only a '93 "Bimmer"??!! Only 60k?
Who sez crime pays? Geez, what a maroon!
They need to execture some of these scumbags, pour encourager les altres.
AND, they need to jail the advertising companies who paid this snail darter for his illegal actions. Hackers getting paid to hack is industrial espionage.
His sentence? Forced to spend one year with his own personal computer permanently hijacked to www.helenthomasnude.com.
That just burns my A$$!!
I guess it's now his turn to get unwanted "he-male" and trojans.
Did he buy the BMW though? Or did he win it? Point is, sounds like more than $60K
>>>Hackers getting paid to hack is industrial espionage.
bump
Cruel and unusual punishment!
Disabling DoD computers during wartime should be considered espionage and treason. Let him rot in a Syrian prison.
bump
"altres" = autres?
400,000 zombie MS-Windows boxes spewing spam all over the internet, and he only gets 6-8 years? Does anyone care to place a bet that those MS-Windows zombies are still out there spewing crap?
The government should go after the companies who bought his 'bots' service under conspiracy laws.
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