Hacker who infected 72K computers gets prison sentence

[InfoSec News <alerts () infosecnews org>]

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-57507998-83/hacker-who-infected-72k-computers-gets-prison-sentence/

By Dara Kerr
CNET News
Security & Privacy
September 6, 2012

After pleading guilty last year to creating a botnet that wreaked havoc 
on about 72,000 computers, Joshua Schichtel was sentenced to prison 
today. The Department of Justice announced that Schichtel received a 
30-month prison sentence for "selling command-and-control access to and 
use of thousands of malware-infected computers."

Schichtel was a unique hacker. Rather than infecting computers for his 
own benefit, he instead sold botnets to customers who must have not had 
the tech know-how to create their own malware.

"Individuals who wanted to infect computers with various different types 
of malicious software (malware) would contact Schichtel and pay him to 
install, or have installed, malware on the computers that comprised 
those botnets," the Department of Justice wrote in a statement today.

It's not clear how many total customers Schichtel had or how many 
computers were infected since he was only caught dealing with one 
customer. This customer paid him a meager fee of $1,500 to get malicious 
software installed on roughly 72,000 computers.

[...]


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