A 20-year-old man pleaded guilty Monday to seizing control of hundreds of thousands of Internet-connected computers and renting the so-called zombie network to people who used it to send out spam.
Jeanson Ancheta, Downey, CA, pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles to four felony charges for crimes that included infecting computers at two military sites.
Ancheta made $60,000 in affiliate advertising revenue by surreptitiously installing adware on about 400,000 computers, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. He used his adware proceeds to buy the servers to run his zombie network, the Department of Justice said when it arrested him on Nov. 3.
Under a plea agreement, which must be approved by a judge, Ancheta must serve four to six years in prison, forfeit a 1993 BMW and more than $58,000. He must also pay restitution of $19,000 to the federal government for infecting the military computers.
Ancheta had faced up to 50 years behind bars.
He is scheduled to be sentenced May 1.
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