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US Bot Herder Admits Infecting 250K Machines
AceCaseOR writes "In Los Angeles criminal court, security consultant John Schiefer, 26, has admitted infecting the systems of his clients with viruses to form a botnet containing a maximum of 250,000 systems. Schiefer used his zombies to steal users' PayPal usernames and passwords to make unauthorized purchases, as well as to install adware on their computers without their consent. Schiefer agreed to plead guilty to four felony charges of accessing protected computers to commit fraud, disclosing illegally intercepted electronic communications, wire fraud, and bank fraud. He will be sentenced Dec. 3 and faces up to 60 years in prison and a fine of $1.75 million."
"...a system so simple even a grandmother could use it to infect computers..."
As a feminist, and a grandmother, i resent that.
The adware and viruses he installed slowed my system down, so I couldn't get first post.
Unfortunately, ancient Greeks had nothing against corrupting the bodies of youths.
Quoth dogbert, "I like to con people. And I like to insult people. If you combine con & insult, you get consult!"
If you need any help telling the real consultants from the phony ones, just contact me, I'm a Consultant Consultant, although our industry association is considering a name change to "Consultant 3.0".
Thx
How many kilowatt-hours were devoted to this nonsense? How many tons of coal were burned to support a botnet of a quarter million computers? How many microkelvin did the resulting carbon dioxide raise the planet's temperature? How many square meters of ice cover did we lose? How many polar bears drowned or froze to death? There's a good Google interview question in here somewhere.
Of course one might ask how many polar bears Google itself has on its conscience but that's the wrong response to give at the interview.