[Infowarrior] - FW: Man gets 3 years for 'botnet' attack

[Richard Forno]

(c/o DK)


http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060826/ap_on_hi_te/hospital_computer_attack

Man gets 3 years for 'botnet' attack
Sat Aug 26, 1:40 AM ET
 

SEATTLE - A man was sentenced to three years in prison Friday for launching
a computer attack that hit tens of thousands of computers, including some
belonging to the        Department of Defense, a Seattle hospital and a
California school district.
 
Christopher Maxwell, 21, of Vacaville, Calif., was also sentenced to three
years of supervised release. He pleaded guilty in May to federal charges of
conspiracy to intentionally cause damage to a protected computer and
conspiracy to commit computer fraud.

U.S. District Judge Marsha J. Pechman said the crime showed "incredible
self-centeredness" with little regard for the impact on others. She said
the prison time was needed as "deterrence for all those youth out there who
are squirreled away in their basements hacking."

Defense attorney Steve Bauer had sought probation and community service,
noting his client had no prior criminal record and saying Maxwell did not
intend his robot virus program to spread as far as it did.

Maxwell and two juvenile co-conspirators were accused of using "botnet"
attacks — programs that let hackers infect and control a computer network —
to install unwanted Internet advertising software, a job that earned them
about $100,000.

Three victims testified at Maxwell's sentencing: a representative of
Seattle's Northwest Hospital, damaged in February 2005; a representative of
the U.S. Defense Department, which reported damage to hundreds of computers
worldwide in 2004 and 2005; and a former system administrator for the
Colton Unified School District in California, where more than 1,000
computers were damaged over several months in 2005.



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