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Saturday, May 6, 2006
Hacker pleads guilty to planting virus
A California computer hacker has pleaded guilty in federal court to creating a virus that caused computer malfunctions at U.S. military installations, Northwest Hospital in Seattle and scores of other locations.
Christopher Maxwell, 20, of Vacaville, Calif., admitted Thursday to planting a "botnet" -- a program sent over the Web that seeks out computers with an exploitable security flaw. Maxwell said in his plea agreement that he and two unnamed co-conspirators created the botnet to obtain commissions from fraudulently installed advertising programs on computers.
Maxwell and his two co-conspirators received more than $100,000 in payments from companies that had the ad programs unknowingly installed, prosecutors say.
One of the infected computers was at Northwest Hospital. The botnet, prosecutors say, in January 2005 affected the hospital's operating systems in several ways: Operating room doors wouldn't open, pagers didn't work and the computers in the intensive-care unit shut down.
Maxwell's hacking also caused more than $135,000 of damage to U.S. military computers in Colorado and Germany. He faces up to 15 years in prison when sentenced by U.S. District Court Judge Marsha Pechman on Aug. 4.
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