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Hospital Hacker Pleads Guilty To Bot Attack
David Utter
Staff Writer
2006-05-08
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Christopher Maxwell will have to pay more than $252,000 in restitution to a hospital and the Department of Defense for his role in attacking thousands of computers with a botnet that installed adware on target machines.
 | | Hospital Hacker Pleads Guilty |  |
A number of those machines belonged to Northwest Hospital and Medical Center in north Seattle. Although AP reported patient care was not jeopardized due to the presence of backup systems, the attacks caused several other problems.
The attacks did affect computers in the hospital's intensive care unit, and also disrupted physicians' pagers as well as prevented doors to operating suites from opening.
"Creating a zombie network, or botnet, isn't a harmless game. In this case a hospital network was affected, and patients' welfare could have been put at risk through the stupidity of the hackers," said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for Sophos.
The attacks also hit hardware at the Headquarters 5th Signal Command in Manheim, Germany, and at the Directorate of Information Management in Fort Carson, Colorado.
Maxwell and two juveniles received about $100,000 for their botnet attacks. Those bots installed adware on the machines they infected. The adware caused numerous system problems, and as the number of compromised machines grew, the problems also increased.
Although Maxwell, who pleaded guilty to committing computer fraud and intentionally damaging a protected computer, could receive up to fifteen years in prison when his sentencing rolls around on August 4th, he likely will receive a shorter sentence according to AP.
At least the restitution and sentence imposed will be greater than that imposed by German authorities on "Sasser Sven" Jaschan last July. The court felt that Jaschan's juvenile status, with him being only 17 when he created the Sasser worm, merited 21 months of probation and 30 hours of community service.
Sasser affected millions of computers around the world, and sentiment that Jaschan's sentence was far too light still persists with many system administrators.
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Tag: Christopher Maxwell
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About the Author:
David Utter is a business and technology writer for SecurityProNews and WebProNews.
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