FBI Cracks Down on Botnet Operators

Two men have been charged with infecting thousands of computers and using them to commit computer crimes.

Hackers and spammers are increasingly finding themselves under the gun as the FBI begins prying further into the underworld of computer crimes. After the high-profile arrest of “spam king” Robert Soloway, the FBI has added two more alleged online menaces to its list: Jason Brewer and Jason Downey. Both are accused of hijacking computers and using them to infect others.

Hijacked computers, known as bots, often function normally and give their owners no clue that they are being used for an ulterior purpose. Networked into botnets, they can be used for a variety of purposes, including denial-of-service attacks that work by training thousands of hijacked computers onto one high-profile target, inundating it with network requests and effectively shutting down service.

Downey is accused of using this technique two weeks ago, which he orchestrated through an Internet Relay Chat (IRC) server. Brewer is accused of hijacking 10,000 computers worldwide, including two in Chicago-area hospitals. According to the FBI’s indictment, the repeated freezing and rebooting of the hospital computers under his control caused delays in medical services.

Now that the alleged perpetrators of the bot infections have been taken in, the FBI is attempting to clean up the mess left in their wake by notifying the owners of infected computers. The Computer Emergency Response Team at Carnegie Mellon University will aid in that task.