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Alleged Adware Purveyor Indicted

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the facing-the-music dept.

weeva writes "Wired News reports that federal prosecutors have indicted a 20-year-old California man for installing adware on 400,000 Windows machines he compromised with a variant of RxBot. Jeanson Ancheta allegedly pulled in $60,000 in affiliate fees from porn pop-up company Gammacash, and 180solutions subsidiary ZangoCash. The feds hope to seize his BMW."

13 of 126 comments (clear)

  1. So . . . by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    So when will Sony be indicted?

  2. So what happens to the Companies by FidelCatsro · · Score: 4, Insightful

    180solutions and Gammacash have put up a show claiming to be the good guys here and helping stop these scurrilous cads . So will there even be an investigation into their affairs.

    Perhaps I am a touch cynical , but I very much doubt they had no idea how a lot of their affiliates work . Did they even look into the business they work with , see if they are legitimate . Perhaps they did not know and were just inept , I very much doubt it though .

    --
    The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
    1. Re:So what happens to the Companies by meringuoid · · Score: 4, Insightful
      Perhaps they did not know and were just inept , I very much doubt it though .

      They probably did not know, because they did not want to know. Their policy was probably 'ask no questions, get no lies': you don't investigate at all into your affiliates' businesses, and then when the faeces strike the ventilator you can honestly claim ignorance...

      --
      Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
    2. Re:So what happens to the Companies by smooth+wombat · · Score: 2, Insightful
      As much as I hate spammers, I hate much more that feds go around "hoping" to take somebody's property. WTF?

      The word 'hope' is used because they, the Feds, have to prove that the car was purchased with funds from the illegal enterprise. This is similar to how property from drug dealers is confiscated. The Feds show that the property was purchased using proceeds from the drug sales.

      In other words, they are depriving the person the fruits of their illegal operations.

      --
      We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
  3. Bad Summary: More than just Adware Purveyor by putko · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The guy ran bots -- he took control of thousands of PCs, and used them for purposes like sending spam.

    Taking control of thousands of PCs, is unauthorized use of someone's computer, which is illegal.

    That's much worse than Talmudically tricking folks into loading up some Adware (e.g. if you want to run the P2P, you are also agreeing to run our adware bot).

    --
    http://www.thebricktestament.com/the_law/when_to_s tone_your_children/dt21_18a.html
  4. Re:Not much by Voltageaav · · Score: 3, Insightful

    15 Cents a computer. $60,000 in a little over one year. With a quick search on Yahoo Jobs, the lowest paying IT security jobs start out at $75,000 with five years of IT experiance. I grant you that he was only 20 and likely didn't have much experiance you could put on a resume, but he likely could have been making $100,000 by the time he was 30 working for the other side without the risk.

    --
    Someone save me from this sanity.
  5. Simple by wehup · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Seems like the feds could clean all of this up by launching a quick investigation into *every* affiliate of the spyware/adware companies. The only way an affiliate can get someone to load this junk is by trickery or exploit.

  6. 60,000 for installations only by nietsch · · Score: 4, Insightful

    So this guy had the installation hacked up so he didn't need any users permission to install the spyware. Why on earth didn't he also hack the display of the popups so they were shown to /dev/null (or whatever the windows variant is) instead of to the user. The most succesfull virusses are the ones that affect their host the least. Or if it was really only the installations, why not fake the installation?

    Worms/bots/virusses usually try to patch the vulnr they entered with. If they extended this behavior to keep windows fully patched then they could even be beneficial to their victims/hosts. That would increase the chances of survival of the malware even more.

    --
    This space is intentionally staring blankly at you
  7. Re:evil axes to grind by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Yes, jobs which should have gone to hard working, deserving Germans rather than being outsourced to some 3rd world flea pit where they will work for peanuts.

  8. Re:wow, what a kingpin by Capt+James+McCarthy · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Sixty thousand smackeroos, that's the high life all right. After buying the BMW he had gas money for a few weeks.

    Weeks? I want to know where you are getting your cheap gas.

    --
    There are no loopholes. It's either legal or it's not.
  9. Re:Not much by MrAngryForNoReason · · Score: 3, Insightful
    15 Cents a computer. $60,000 in a little over one year......he likely could have been making $100,000 by the time he was 30 working for the other side without the risk.

    It is hardly as if he was working 9-5 on this 5 days a week. $60,000 for running automated tools to compromise other peoples machines sounds well worth the short amount of time it would take to set up.

    In fact there is nothing in the article to indicate that he wasn't working a day job and doing the rest in his spare time.

  10. Re:Not much by LordFnord · · Score: 2, Insightful
    With a quick search on Yahoo Jobs, the lowest paying IT security jobs start out at $75,000 with five years of IT experiance

    Maybe so, but there's an important difference between "spending 10+ hours a day commuting/working with a real job" and "spending an hour a week reading reports from your bots".

    he likely could have been making $100,000 by the time he was 30 working for the other side without the risk.

    It may also be worth considering how much he could have grown his botnet by the time he was 30, or what other (potentially less risky and more lucrative) illegal activities he could have funded with the profits.

    A criminal lifestyle operates on a totally different risk:reward ratio to a legitimate one. This guy felt the risk was worth the reward, but it didn't work out for him.

  11. If this were a drug-related case by thedbp · · Score: 3, Insightful

    They would have already seized all his property, and even if he was found not guilty, he wouldn't get any of it back.

    This guy may very well turn out to be a scumbag, but until a court of law determines him to be a scumbag, I don't think we should be so smug as to cheer for the fed's inalienable right to take whatever it wants from whomever it wants.