Apparently he stopped his naughty activities back in 2006, but still…a guy that is supposed to securing machines was installing malware and had a bot totaling about a quarter of a million zombies.

Most used for info gathering, Paypal accounts and installing Malware for comission, he claims to have made $19,000 in a week installing TopConverting (read more).

A Los Angeles security professional has admitted to infecting more than a quarter million computers with malicious software and installing spyware that was used to steal personal data and serve victims with online advertisements.

John Kenneth Schiefer, 26, variously known online as “acid” and “acidstorm,” agreed to plead guilty to at least four felony charges of fraud and wiretapping, charges punishable by $1.75 million in fines and nearly 60 years in prison.

Investigators say Schiefer and two minors — identified in the complaint only by their online screen names “pr1me” and “dynamic” — broke into about 250,000 PCs. On at least 137,000 of those infected systems, Schiefer and his cohorts installed programs that allowed them to control the machines remotely.

That’s a pretty reasonable sized network, enough to rent out for some serious DDoS attacks, and certainly enough Paypal accounts to earn some good money.

Schiefer said he and his friends spread the bot programs mainly over AOL Instant Messenger (AIM). By using malicious “spreader” programs such as Niteaim and AIM Exploiter, Schiefer and his co-conspirators spammed out messages inviting recipients to click on a link. Anyone who took the bait had a “Trojan horse” program downloaded to their machine, an invader that then tried to fetch the malicious bot program.

Schiefer admits he and friends used several hjacked PayPal accounts to purchase Web hosting that helped facilitate the spreading of their bot programs.

Pretty lame, but most of the infections were done with pre-built AIM tools. This is ultimate script kiddy stuff, but hey I guess it works right.

Source: Washington Post