On May 9, 2006, Jeanson James Ancheta (born April 26, 1985) became the first person to be charged for controlling large numbers of hijacked computers or
botnet
A botnet is a group of Internet-connected devices, each of which runs one or more bots. Botnets can be used to perform Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks, steal data, send spam, and allow the attacker to access the device and its conn ...
s.
Biography
Ancheta was going to
Downey High School
Downey High School is one of two senior high schools located in the Los Angeles suburb of Downey, California, and within the Downey Unified School District. It is located at 11040 Brookshire Ave. At the present time the school has an enrollment ...
in
Downey, California
Downey is a city located in Southeast Los Angeles County, California, United States, southeast of downtown Los Angeles. It is considered part of the Gateway Cities. The city is the birthplace of the Apollo space program. It is also the home of ...
until 2001 when he dropped out of school.
He later entered an alternative program for students with academic or behavioral problems.
He worked at an Internet cafe and according to his family wanted to join the military reserves. Around June 2004 he started to work with botnets after discovering
rxbot, a common computer worm that could spread his net of infected computers.
Botnets
Botnet is a
jargon
Jargon is the specialized terminology associated with a particular field or area of activity. Jargon is normally employed in a particular Context (language use), communicative context and may not be well understood outside that context. The conte ...
term for a collection of
software
Software is a set of computer programs and associated documentation and data. This is in contrast to hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work.
At the lowest programming level, executable code consists ...
robots, or "
bots
The British Overseas Territories (BOTs), also known as the United Kingdom Overseas Territories (UKOTs), are fourteen territories with a constitutional and historical link with the United Kingdom. They are the last remnants of the former Bri ...
", that run autonomously and automatically.
Arrest and sentence
In November 2005 he was captured in an elaborate sting operation when FBI agents lured him to their local office on the pretext of collecting computer equipment.
The arrest was part of the
Operation: Bot Roast.
On May 9, 2006 Ancheta pleaded guilty to four felony charges of violating United States Code Section 1030, Fraud and Related Activity in Connection with Computers, specifically subsections (a)(5)(A)(i), 1030 (a)(5)(B)(i), and 1030(b).
Ancheta must serve 57 months in prison, forfeit a 1993 BMW and more than $58,000 in profit. He must also pay restitution of $15,000 US to the U.S. federal government for infecting the military computers.
See also
*
List of convicted computer criminals
Convicted computer criminals are people who are caught and convicted of computer crimes such as breaking into computers or computer networks. Computer crime can be broadly defined as criminal activity involving information technology infrastruc ...
References
External links
US Department of Justice bio
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ancheta, Jeanson James
1985 births
Living people
People from Downey, California
American computer criminals
People convicted of cybercrime