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Feds Crack Down On Spyware, DDoS Perps
David Utter
Staff Writer
2007-10-02
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Media Motor has been shutdown by the Federal Trade Commission as part of a settlement, and a 21 year-old male from California was arrested in connection with a DDoS attack on Castlecops.
 | | Feds Crack Down On Spyware, DDoS Perps |  |
ERG Ventures will give up $330,000 as part of a settlement with the FTC over its Media Motor program. In November 2006, the FTC accused ERG of hiding Media Motor inside downloadable content like videos and screensavers.
Once embedded in a machine, the FTC said Media Motor would go out and grab malware that people could not easily removed from their system.
"The software changed consumers' home pages, tracked their Internet activity, altered browser settings, degraded computer performance, and disabled anti-spyware and anti-virus software," the FTC said in a statement about the settlement, which enjoins ERG from future malware and spyware activities.
Paul Laudanski of Castlcops contacted SecurityProNews to let us know about a development in the DDoS attack investigation regarding their site. The February 2007 attack nearly wiped Castlecops out of business.
Robin Laudanski noted the arrest of Greg King, aka SilenZ, in connection with the attack. A statement from the US Attorney's office in Fresno said King has been charged with four counts of electronic transmission of codes to cause damage to protected computers.
"When agents went to arrest King at his residence this morning, King went out the back door of the residence carrying a laptop computer, depositing it in the bushes in the backyard. Agents obtained a warrant to search King's backyard and seized the computer," US Attorney McGregor Scott's office said.
King has been accused of controlling more than 7,000 bots, which were used to perpetrate distributed denial of service attacks. The maximum penalty for a violation of transmission of damaging code is ten years' imprisonment and a $250,000 fine, subject to federal sentencing guidelines.
About the Author:
David Utter is a business and technology writer for SecurityProNews and WebProNews.
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