Alleged Adware Purveyor Indicted 126
weeva writes "Wired News reports that federal prosecutors have indicted a 20-year-old California man for installing adware on 400,000 Windows machines he compromised with a variant of RxBot. Jeanson Ancheta allegedly pulled in $60,000 in affiliate fees from porn pop-up company Gammacash, and 180solutions subsidiary ZangoCash. The feds hope to seize his BMW."
So . . . (Score:5, Insightful)
So what happens to the Companies (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps I am a touch cynical , but I very much doubt they had no idea how a lot of their affiliates work . Did they even look into the business they work with , see if they are legitimate . Perhaps they did not know and were just inept , I very much doubt it though .
Re:So what happens to the Companies (Score:5, Insightful)
They probably did not know, because they did not want to know. Their policy was probably 'ask no questions, get no lies': you don't investigate at all into your affiliates' businesses, and then when the faeces strike the ventilator you can honestly claim ignorance...
Bad Summary: More than just Adware Purveyor (Score:2, Insightful)
Taking control of thousands of PCs, is unauthorized use of someone's computer, which is illegal.
That's much worse than Talmudically tricking folks into loading up some Adware (e.g. if you want to run the P2P, you are also agreeing to run our adware bot).
Re:Not much (Score:3, Insightful)
Simple (Score:5, Insightful)
60,000 for installations only (Score:5, Insightful)
Worms/bots/virusses usually try to patch the vulnr they entered with. If they extended this behavior to keep windows fully patched then they could even be beneficial to their victims/hosts. That would increase the chances of survival of the malware even more.
Re:evil axes to grind (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:wow, what a kingpin (Score:3, Insightful)
Weeks? I want to know where you are getting your cheap gas.
Re:Not much (Score:4, Insightful)
It is hardly as if he was working 9-5 on this 5 days a week. $60,000 for running automated tools to compromise other peoples machines sounds well worth the short amount of time it would take to set up.
In fact there is nothing in the article to indicate that he wasn't working a day job and doing the rest in his spare time.
Re:Not much (Score:2, Insightful)
Maybe so, but there's an important difference between "spending 10+ hours a day commuting/working with a real job" and "spending an hour a week reading reports from your bots".
he likely could have been making $100,000 by the time he was 30 working for the other side without the risk.
It may also be worth considering how much he could have grown his botnet by the time he was 30, or what other (potentially less risky and more lucrative) illegal activities he could have funded with the profits.
A criminal lifestyle operates on a totally different risk:reward ratio to a legitimate one. This guy felt the risk was worth the reward, but it didn't work out for him.
If this were a drug-related case (Score:4, Insightful)
This guy may very well turn out to be a scumbag, but until a court of law determines him to be a scumbag, I don't think we should be so smug as to cheer for the fed's inalienable right to take whatever it wants from whomever it wants.
Re:So what happens to the Companies (Score:3, Insightful)
The word 'hope' is used because they, the Feds, have to prove that the car was purchased with funds from the illegal enterprise. This is similar to how property from drug dealers is confiscated. The Feds show that the property was purchased using proceeds from the drug sales.
In other words, they are depriving the person the fruits of their illegal operations.