News

Hacker for hire gets 30 months in prison

by Bernard Sinai · Published September 7, 2012 · Updated March 20, 2017

Schichtel sentenced to 30 months in prison.

Joshua Schichtel is probably one the world’s most notorious ‘unknown’ hacker in cyberspace.

The 30 year old Phoenix, Arizona, local sold bots to his clients who used it to infect other computers, and the US Department of Justice has just sentenced him to a 30 month prison term, thenextweb.com reports.

The hacker was found guilty of infecting more than 72, 000 computers. A statement by the Justice Department says that he offered his services to people who wanted to infect other computers.

Individuals who wanted to infect computers with various different types of malicious software (malware) would contact Schichtel and pay him to install, or have installed, malware on the computers that comprised those botnets…

However, Schichtel only made a mere US$1, 500 for his activities. That is approximately US$1.66 for every day the hacker spends in a cell – but that’s not all.

cnet.news.com reports that Schichtel has a record of hacking. In 2004, a complaint was brought against him for “conspiring to use thousands of infected computers to launch Distributed Denial of Service attacks against e-commerce websites.” The hacker was allegedly part of the ‘DDoS Mafia’; a four men group who were accused of putting their special skillset and knowledge for hire.

O’Reily reported that they were accused of carrying out attacks on behalf of Massachusetts businessman, Jay Echouafni, who sold satellite TV equipment on his website. The attacks cost Echouani’s rivals over US$2 million in mitigation fees and revenue.

Unfortunately, the US government could not get an indictment on time and the case was dismissed.

The DOJ website says the hacker pleaded guilty on August 17 last year “to one count of attempting to cause damage to multiple computers without authorization by the transmission of programs, codes or commands”. All are violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.