Experts at Sophos have welcomed the news that the FBI has arrested a 20-year-old man suspected of running a zombie network.
US Attorney spokesman Thom Mrozek said the prosecution was unusual because Jeanson James Ancheta, who lives in the Los Angeles suburb of Downey, was accused of profiting from his attacks by installing adware on a network of innocent third-party compromised computers. According to prosecutors, some of the computers attacked were at the Weapons Division of the US Naval Air Warfare Center in China Lake, California and at the US Department of Defense.
Ancheta is said to have made have made nearly $60,000 from installing adware on the zombie computers, using the profits to pay for computer servers to carry out additional attacks and a luxury BMW car. As a side business Ancheta is also alleged to have sold access to the zombie network to spammers, who used the third party computers to launch spam campaigns.
Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for Sophos said,
"Zombie botnets are a growing security problem as they pump out spam campaigns, steal information, or launch attacks against corporate networks. In this case it appears they were being primarily used for displaying unwanted pop-up advertisements, filling the pockets of the hacker with cash."
Jeanson James Ancheta was arrested after being lured to the FBI's offices in Los Angeles to pick up computer equipment seized in an earlier raid. He has been charged with conspiracy, attempted transmission of code to a protected computer, transmission of code to a government computer, accessing a protected computer to commit fraud and money laundering.
If convicted of all counts, Ancheta faces a maximum term of 50 years in prison.
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