December 18, 2007

California Botneter Pleas Guilty

John Schiefer, 26, of Los Angeles, California agreed to plead guilty for infecting as many as 250,000 computers with malware so he could steal money from Paypal accounts.

Schiefer could go to jail for 60 years and be fined up to 1.75 million dollars, reports PCWorld.

Schiefer was able to collect information sent from the infected computers, including usernames and passwords for Paypal accounts. He and his associates were then able to make purchases using the Paypal accounts. They also shared the password information with others.

This is the first prosecution of a hacker for this type of activity, according to the United States Attorney's Office for the Central District of California. The Federal Bureau of Investigation pursued the case.

The FBI has stated that Schiefer is the first person to be charged under the federal wiretap statute for conduct related to botnets.

[Hacker Pleads Guilty to Spreading Botnets]

Posted in Tech News by #!/usr/bin/geek at 2007-12-18 00:10 ET (GMT-5)

Tags: botnet irc computersecurity coporatesecurity datasecurity hacker hackers hacking