Hacker Gets 30 Months Prison Term for Infecting 72,000 PCs
A hacker received a 30 month in prison sentence for creating a botnet and a charge of violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.
30-year old Joshua Schichtel had pleaded guilty to building the 72,000 computer net in 2009 as a service to customers who would ask him to infect computers with various types of malware. Apparently, Schichtel accepted a $1,500 payment from a customer in one specific case.
Following the 30 month prison term, Schichtel will have to comply with a 3-year of supervised release order. Joshua Schichtel has been involved in a legal investigation before. He was included in a 2004 complaint in which he and others were accused of infecting thousands of users for the purpose of a Denial of Service attack.
The 2004 charges against the "DDoS Mafia" for hire were dismissed due to a passed indictment deadline.

Law enforcement needs to spend their time tracking down actual malicious criminals like this guy. Not random guys who just want to listen to some free music.
Don't get me wrong, he deserves the time, but I mean that he has, evidently, some talent programming and detecting exploits. That is the kind of talent that software companies look. He just followed a coward's path.
Don't get me wrong, he deserves the time, but I mean that he has, evidently, some talent programming and detecting exploits. That is the kind of talent that software companies look. He just followed a coward's path.
You're right. He caused countless people all sorts of problems and was basically an online hitman for hire. What we should really do is give him a nice job in a high paying position. Maybe throw in some benefits too.
"What is reading comprehension I'm new here" - you
If you get hacked it's ur own damn fault...
People live in their own dream world bubble sometimes, it pisses me off and needs to be popped...
That makes just as much sense as saying it's your own fault if you get robbed. It's not my fault if I get "hacked." There are measures you can take to try to prevent that, but it's the offender's fault--and hence their responsibility.
I'm all for punishing for knowingly aiding in the malicious attacks against computer users.
Law enforcement needs to spend their time tracking down actual malicious criminals like this guy. Not random guys who just want to listen to some free music.
That is not what he meant. What he meant was, the guy has talent and skill, but wasted it on criminal activities and scams. He could have been working at a legitimate company or even on his own doing legitimate work.
Digital piracy is still a crime. The punishment for it is generally far beyond reason, but that just means that the punishment should be brought down to a reasonable level, not averted entirely.
The U.S. courts aren't for policing online activity, and if people don't like that they shouldn't connect their computers to the Internet. Seriously....
Now, why am I defending this guy?
I'm not, I'm just saying I don't like the fact they went after this guy. I pay taxes. The amount of money that goes into prosecuting and then incarserating this guy is hardly worth my money for other citizens being foolish. They got what they deserved. They opened up their personal information and put a "free" sign on it. When will people start taking some damn responsibility for being stupid?
Before you make the argument that if I were one of them I'd want something done about it, try again... I would have got what I deserved. Sure it would be a nightmare to deal with fixing everything, but if they really got pass the secruity then it was my own damn fault.
*Smashes your car's windshield, and steals your $20 bill that was lying on the dashboard.*
Yeah, IT'S YOUR FAULT FOR NOT INSTALLING UNBREAKABLE GLASS ON YOUR CAR, MORON!
(One of my uncles is a police officer, and he said that one of his buddies' police car's windshield was destroyed because of a $10 bill lying on the dashboard.)
He ran a business through illegally commandeering more than 70K computers and infecting them with malware without the permission of the owners. This is not comparable whatsoever to picking up a $20 bill found on the ground. He committed a crime against thousands of people and should be punished for it.
Defending the hacker is like defending scam/break-in artists. Should people allowed to be scammed or have their stuff broken in for being "stupid"?
His victim's ignorance of computers doesn't excuse his abuse of them.
lol
Totally depends. If you get hacked by some random drifter just looking to steal credit card data, that is definitely your fault for not faithfully conforming to PCI or FISMA standards. But if Anonymous or some other organized group is hell bent on hacking you out of revenge or whatever reason, there is absolutely nothing you can do about it except unplug your LAN firewall from your perimeter network switch.