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Felonious Hacking In California
John Stith
Staff Writer
2006-01-24
 Insider Reports RSS Feed
California hacker Jeanson James Ancheta, 20, pled guilty in Los Angeles federal court to taking control of hundreds of thousands of computers in the form of four felony counts which could land him a six-year prison sentence and federal fines.
The hacker utilized zombie networks to distribute pop-up ads and then rented the ads to people with dubious intentions. They attacked sites, filled the spam bucket, and even caused the federal government a fairly substantial $61,000.
According to terms of the deal, he'll do the 6 years, pay the fines, cough up the money made and his '93 beamer. All this must still be approved by the district judge.
According to the AP story, prosecutors say this is the first case to go after profits gained from the use of botnets. For those who don't know about botnets, they are large groups of computers (zombies) taken over by hackers for various illicit activities. Usually the owners of said computers have no clue what happens to their computers.
Ancheta apparently had been at this for quite some time, about 14 months to be specific. His house was raided about six months into the hacking spree and he continued to run the business, even after the FBI raid.
The scheme was quite large but it really came to a head when the parties involved infected military computers at the China Lake Naval Air Facility and the Defense Information System Agency.
A couple of thoughts on this. First, a hacker got busted. That's good. He had hacked military computers. This isn't so good. Even though the hack is a couple of years old, it's just one more opportunity to let people know the U.S. security networks aren't as secure as many think they are.
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About the Author:
John is a staff writer for SecurityProNews covering cyber security.
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