DDoS'er Pleaded Guilty

[Asmo]

Jeanson James Ancheta, 20, of Downey, California, who was arrested in November of last year (we reported on his arrest here) has pleaded guilty to the charges of assembling a botnet, spamming, spreading of malicious software and profiting from these activities by selling services related to the botnet such as performing DDoS attacks.

Among the machines he infected and included in his botnet where computers at the Weapons Division of the United States Naval Air Warfare Center and machines operated by the U.S. Department of Defense.

The U.S. Attorney's office showed that Ancheta modified and disseminated a trojan horse program called rxbot. With this trojan he created a botnet which he commanded from an IRC channel.

Ancheta admitted that he earned approximately $3,000 by selling services performed with his botnet. He also admitted in earning $60,000 by having approximately 400,000 machines downloading and installing adware.

Ancheta will have to pay $15,000 to the Weapons Division of the United States Naval Air Warfare Center in China Lake and the Defense Information Systems Agency to cover damages. Also the $60,000 earned and a BMW and computer equipment will be forfeited.

Ancheta will hear his sentence on the 1st of May, and might face up to 25 years in prison.

After the recent bust in the Netherlands, this is the second major operation against DDoS'ers showing a genuine growing interest of governments around the world to tackle this growing problem.
_________________
Asmo

webmaster www.IRC-Junkie.org

[Lame_nick]

Gosh, 400.000 machines? That's pretty much. But anyways, I think 25 years is a "little" too much punishment. In Norway, the maximum punishment time in jail is 21 years... :P