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By Charles Piller
Times Staff Writer
May 9, 2006
A Downey man was sentenced to nearly five years in federal
prison
Monday for using malicious software to seize control of
400,000
computers and then selling access to the
"zombie" machines to spammers
and hackers.
Prosecutors said the 57-month sentence for Jeanson James
Ancheta, 21,
was the longest ever handed down for spreading computer
viruses. The
case also marked the first federal prosecution for using
such hacking
methods for financial gain.
Ancheta pleaded guilty in January to selling access to
so-called
botnet software that can remotely control computers to
deliver spam
and orchestrate distributed denial-of-service attacks
against
websites. Such attacks send overwhelming streams of requests
to the
sites, causing them to shut down.
Ancheta advertised his botnets online under the heading
"botz4sale."
"Your worst enemy is your own intellectual arrogance
that somehow the
world cannot touch you on this," U.S. District Judge
R. Gary Klausner
said at the sentencing hearing.
Ancheta also admitted to directing armies of infected
computers to
download adware — malicious software that causes advertising
messages
to appear on the user's screen and can harm affected
computers.
He collected $107,000 in commissions from the advertising
companies.
Ancheta used an elaborate subterfuge to hide his actions
from the
victims and from the companies whose messages were displayed
on their
computers, said Assistant U.S. Atty. James M. Aquilina.
Ancheta also was ordered to pay $15,000 in restitution to
the Naval
Air Warfare Center in China Lake and the Defense Information
Systems
agency, whose computers were compromised by the botnet
attacks.
"Every conviction raises the barrier to entry for
these guys," said
Scott Weiss, CEO of IronPort Systems in San Bruno, Calif.,
which
produces anti-spam software.
But, he predicted, such crimes would remain common.
"Most of these bot networks are not being run from
suburban L.A.,"
Weiss said. "They hire guys in places like Ukraine
where the long arm
of the law doesn't reach as easily."
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