Trojan horse hacker jailed in US
Date: May 14, 2005Source: ComputerWeekly.com
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A US hacker has been jailed for 12 months for using a Trojan horse virus to break into US Department of Defense computers.
The Indiana man, 21, was part of an international gang of hackers known as "Thr34t-Krew" (TK).
The Troj/TKBot-A Trojan horse (also known as the TKWorm) exploited a vulnerability that is found on some Microsoft IIS Web servers.
At least two computers belonging to the Department of Defense were infected and damaged by the malicious code.
Between October 2002 and 7 March 2003, the jailed man and others were able to remotely control infected computers without the knowledge of the computers' owners. Other computers around the world were infected.
"There is a growing trend for hacking gangs to break into innocent people's computers to spy, to steal, and to cause damage," said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at security software company Sophos.
"This sentence sends out a strong message to other hackers that infecting others with Trojan horses and other malware is not acceptable," he said.
The jailed man, who pleaded guilty to the charges, has been ordered to pay $12,000 (£6,500) to the Department of Defense for damage caused by the Trojan horse.
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