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Texas Man Pleads Guilty To Building Botnet-For-Hire

Posted by samzenpus on from the best-little-botnet-in-Texas dept.

Julie188 writes "A Mesquite, Texas, man is set to plead guilty to training his 22,000-PC botnet on a local ISP — just to show off its firepower to a potential customer. David Anthony Edwards will plead guilty to charges that he and another man, Thomas James Frederick Smith, built a custom botnet, called Nettick, which they then tried to sell to cybercriminals at the rate of US$0.15 per infected computer, according to court documents."

2 of 95 comments (clear)

  1. Re:$0.15 Per? by Xaositecte · · Score: 4, Interesting

    What's to stop him from leasing use of the botnet to multiple cyber-criminals now that he's built it up? I mean, the initial sale is just a little bit, but suppose the market for the botnet is more than just one organization, or suppose he charges by the day?

    I'm not really a professional botnet organizer, so I have no idea how plausible this is.

  2. Re:Counts by kcelery · · Score: 4, Interesting

    22000 machines, if each one got the mission done. There will be 22000 infected machines. If the guy is sentenced
    for 1 day each. He will be away for over 60 years.