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Yahoo!News US charges 'Botmaster'


turetzsr

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...See full story in Yahoo!News.

...Excerpts:

By Dan Whitcomb Thu Nov 3, 6:53 PM ET

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A 20-year-old man accused of using thousands of hijacked computers, or "bot nets," to damage systems and send massive amounts of spam across the Internet was arrested on Thursday in what authorities called the first such prosecution of its kind.

Jeanson James Ancheta, who prosecutors say was a well-known member of the "Botmaster Underground" -- or the secret network of computer hackers skilled at bot attacks -- was taken into custody after being lured to

FBI offices in Los Angeles, said U.S. Attorney's spokesman Thom Mrozek.

<snip>

Mrozek said the prosecution was unique because, unlike in previous cases, Ancheta was accused of profiting from his attacks -- by selling access to his "bot nets" to other hackers and planting adware -- software that causes ads to pop up -- into infected computers.

<snip>

Ancheta has been indicted on a 17-count federal indictment <snip>

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...See full story in Yahoo!News.

...Excerpts:

35509[/snapback]

There was an interesting article in the New Yorker Magazine a few weeks ago about "Zombie Hunters" who try to defeat "cyberextortionists" http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/051010fa_fact. Specifically, it was about Barret Lyon and his company Prolexic which serves to defend websites against distributed denial of service attacks from botnets when they refuse to pay for "protection" from (mainly eastern European) gangs. Ironically, most of his clients are shady sites that sell penis enlargers, gambling, fake herbal meds, etc. - sites that depend on the spam spewed by botnets (possibly the same ones).

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