US News Florida botnet herder sheared by cops, faces 10 years in pen

The Helper

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Most 21-year-olds in the US are either off at college enjoying their newfound freedom to drink themselves into a stupor, or already throwing themselves into the workforce (possibly also drinking themselves into a stupor). But 21-year-old Robert Matthew Bentley instead faces jail time and up to $250,000 in fines after pleading guilty for installing adware on "hundreds of computers" across Europe.

Bentley began infecting computers in October of 2005, according to court documents seen by Ars, after applying for an account at Dollar Revenue, a company that pays for users to place adware on vulnerable machines. He and unnamed co-conspirators proceeded to spread adware through the use of smokedro.com and an IRC bot that they used to control the machines after they had been infected.

The legal case began in 2006, when Newell Rubbermaid's European representatives complained to London's Metropolitan Police Computer Crime Unit about the apparent infection. Rubbermaid determined that at least 100 computers had been infected and that the cost to fix the problem has been at least $150,000. However, the company says that new infections are still being detected, and that costs to neutralize the botnet are still rising.

Read the news here.
 

Prometheus

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Yea, it'll cost $150,000 to run Adaware or Spybot on a couple of computers....
 

darkRae

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News said:
a company that pays for users to place adware on vulnerable machines

Now we know that some of us are really stupid.
 
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