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'Blackhole' Exploit Kit Author Gets 7 Years (krebsonsecurity.com)
An anonymous reader writes: A Moscow court this week convicted and sentenced seven hackers for breaking into countless online bank accounts -- including "Paunch," the nickname used by the author of the infamous "Blackhole" exploit kit. Once an extremely popular crimeware-as-a-service offering, Blackhole was for several years responsible for a large percentage of malware infections and stolen banking credentials, and likely contributed to tens of millions of dollars stolen from small to mid-sized businesses over several years. According to Russia's ITAR-TASS news network, Dmitry "Paunch" Fedotov was sentenced on April 12 to seven years in a Russian penal colony. In October 2013, the then 27-year-old Fedotov was arrested along with an entire team of other cybercriminals who worked to sell, develop and profit from Blackhole."He was helping a lot of gangs that were robbing Russian banks," Krebs tweeted, "They tend not to have a sense of humor about that."
Firstly, if he was rich enough to have a Porche (roughly $100K, depending on options), he was probably making a lot of money. A smart person could be putting that money away to become financially independent.
Trading 7 years for not having to work for the rest of your life sounds like a good trade to me.
(Assuming he was smart enough to sock away the money, assuming that it wasn't confiscated, and assuming he can tolerate Russian prison.)
Secondly, the guy who made the BlackHole exploit kit that cost businesses tens of millions of dollars got seven years, while Aaron Swartz was violating JSTOR's terms of service (and technically trespassing) and was charged with $1 million in fines, 35 years in prison, asset forfeiture, restitution, and supervised release.
(Apples and oranges, I know. Russians don't have a "sense of humor" when it comes to robbing businesses in other countries.)