LOS ANGELES, California (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.
A bot is a program that surreptitiously installs itself on a computer and allows the hacker to control the computer. A bot net is a network of such robot computers, which can harness their collective power to do considerable damage or send out huge quantities of spam.
Mrozek said Ancheta, who lives in the Los Angeles suburb of Downey, was thought to have made nearly $60,000 from the planted adware, using the money to pay for servers to carry out additional attacks, computer equipment and a BMW.
He said Ancheta was taken into custody after FBI agents called him into their offices to pick up computer equipment that had been seized in an earlier raid.
Among the computers he attacked, Mrozek said, were some at the Weapons Division of the U.S. Naval Air Warfare Center in China Lake, California and at the U.S. Department of Defense.
http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/11/04/c...eut/index.html
-- in an unrelated story --
GFY daily hits plummet
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.
A bot is a program that surreptitiously installs itself on a computer and allows the hacker to control the computer. A bot net is a network of such robot computers, which can harness their collective power to do considerable damage or send out huge quantities of spam.
Mrozek said Ancheta, who lives in the Los Angeles suburb of Downey, was thought to have made nearly $60,000 from the planted adware, using the money to pay for servers to carry out additional attacks, computer equipment and a BMW.
He said Ancheta was taken into custody after FBI agents called him into their offices to pick up computer equipment that had been seized in an earlier raid.
Among the computers he attacked, Mrozek said, were some at the Weapons Division of the U.S. Naval Air Warfare Center in China Lake, California and at the U.S. Department of Defense.
http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/11/04/c...eut/index.html
-- in an unrelated story --
GFY daily hits plummet
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