Botnet Hacker Gets Four Years

[RamboLiberal]

Source: Wired

A Los Angeles man was sentenced late Wednesday in federal court to four years in prison after pleading guilty last year to infecting as many as 250,000 computers and stealing thousands of peoples' identities and hijacking their bank accounts.

The Los Angeles authorities said John Schiefer, 27, was the nation's first defendant to plead guilty to wiretapping charges in connection to using botnets.

Schiefer, who went by the online handle "acidstorm," faced as many as 60 years in prison and acknowledged using a botnet to remotely control computers across the United States. Once in control of the computers, the authorities said, his spybot malware allowed him to intercept computer communications. He mined usernames and passwords on accounts such as PayPal and made purchases totaling thousands of dollars without consent.

The authorities said he worked by day as an information security consultant with 3G Communications.

The defendant was among eight individuals indicted or successfully prosecuted in a crack down on black hat hackers who use armies of zombie computers to commit financial fraud, attack web sites with floods of traffic and send spam. The crimes at issue involved more than $20 million in losses, according to the FBI.

Read more: http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2009/03/botnet-hacker-g.html

---

Good! Hope they keep him off the PC at the prison if they have internet access.

[billybob537]

1. Meanwhile our entire financial system is in the

Toilet becouse the SEC refused to investigate fraud when it was tipped off by financial experts!

[Jkid]

2. US prisons don't have any internet access for prisoners.

They do have PCs, but they're for educational and work purposes only.