Botnet Spammer Gets Just 18 Months For Being Odd

itwbennett writes "Thirty-three-year old Scottsman Matthew Anderson was sentenced this week to 18 months in prison for orchestrating a malicious Trojan campaign in 2006. The reason for his relatively light sentence? He apparently wasn't seeking to maximize profit like any normal, red-blooded hacker. Also, his timing was good. His arrest in June 2006 predated by a matter of months the Police and Justice Act, which would likely have resulted in a harsher sentence. By comparison, David Kernell, who snooped in Sarah Palin's email, got a year in prison."

Comments

Re:18 months light "by comparison?"

[Nadaka]

18 months as punishment for creating and operating a botnet for profit? Taking control of thousands of other peoples property.

VS

1 year for guessing a publicly available password reset question/answer on a published email address and then publishing the password and doing no real damage except to expose a politicians improper use of private email channels for to violate public transparency laws.

Yes, the first is a very light sentence in comparison to the second considering the crime involved.