Mass spammer faces long jail term
21-year-old Jeanson James Ancheta has been sentenced to five years in prison -- the longest term ever given to a virus writer -- for "building a network of 400,000 slaved PCs and using it to install adware and send spam," reports VNUNet. Ancheta's program took control of the PCs and then formed them into a spam-sending network known as a "botnet." Ancheta, who appears to have made a little more than $100,000 for all his troubles, may have overreached when he tried to enslave computers at the US Naval Air Warfare Center in China Lake, Calif. Ars Technica admits that the punishment "does seem severe," but also notes that "this is the first time that a hacker has faced criminal penalties for a botnet scheme, so the sentence sets an important precedent."
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