"a series of panic attacks led him to spend more time indoors."
Well he'll be very happy where he's going as he won't be spending much time outdoors.
A Scottish botnet master was this morning jailed for 18 months and ordered to pay £5,000 costs for hijacking many thousands of computers from his mum's front room. Matthew Anderson, 33, from Drummuir, used the global network of compromised machines to send tens of millions of spam emails. The father of five, whose own home was …
start adding theft of electricity to the charges?
I pay for the leccy that drives my PC, if someone else is running a program on my PC then they are stealing my leccy.
The punishment should be proportionate as well. Hanging for the first offence, drawing & quartering for any subsequent offences.
This weekend I'm going to take my kids for a walk on the moors, have some friends round for drinks, browse the net and bang my delicious wife. Enjoy prison fuckface. Hopefully you'll deter some other humanity sapping bastard who completely screws over what the www is supposed to be about.
Did this guy murder someone? Rape, pillage?
Nope! He sent some spam... and spied on a crying girl. (Ok he may have done worse, I don't know)
But assuming the facts are as stated, why such hostility?
I've had servers black listed because of spammers (in more innocent times), fought with floods of spam, been put off breakfast by horrendous porn email and been elated at the news of my impending good fortune as I receive the funds of the late Mr Ubuntu, yet I don't feel that 18months is appropriate. Perhaps a few hundred hours community service and a fine equal to the revenue he generated, plus a short custodial sentence for the spying.
I guess in his case that might come as a bit of a relief from the 5 sprogs tearing the place up 24/7.
Sticking a compromised PC in the eCrime unit. WTF was that about? Proving how smart he was? Finding out if they were on to him?
I guess he never considered that being the Police they could *ask* who had that account if the hosting company were in the UK.
Given the huge pile of crap the UK Police has foisted on the GP in the name of "Computer crime," it's nice to see someone who actually *deserves* a prison sentence going to jail.
It's so damm rare.
I was really elated, eCrime actually catch botnet master. Until right at the end the old adage sprang up. Only the stupid get caught.
What a complete amateur, using a server registered to himself, with the same traceable emails and a gmail email addy, ONSHORE in the uk.
He didnt put one in the eCrime unit in the article, he had one at a hospital that the sysadmin's traced back to the fasthosts, or thats at least how I read it.
If he had of compromised the eCrime network, id have had to tip my hat in slight distasteful respect at the balls but he didnt.
For the leniency, its about intent. He KNEW 100000% he was being lowlife scum, he went about it every day planning and scheming. Over a long period. Most assaults with short sentances are heat of the moment incidents, otherwise it becomes 10+ years for premeditated manslaughter or the like... Jail him with nothing more sophisticated than a red led commodore calculator and leave him to rot there...