Blaster Master gets 18 months
p2pnet.net News:- From all appearances Blaster Master Jeff Parson is typical of a lot of people who spend their lives online.
He’s socially inept, insecure and with very little self-esteem.
And now he’s going to spend a year-and-a-half in a US federal jail for releasing a version of the Blaster worm in 2003.
Good idea. That should do the trick. After spending 18 months in a federal pen, he’s bound to emerge a much better person and a fully functional US citizen.
“The Blaster computer worm and its variants wreaked havoc on the Internet, and cost businesses and computer users substantial time and money,” said US attorney general John Ashcroft at the time.
“Cyber hacking is not joy riding. Hacking disrupts lives and victimizes innocent people across the nation.”
US District Judge Marsha Pechman was “lenient” because of Parson’s history of, “mental-health problems and because his home life ‘sounds grimmer than many prison camps I’ve visited’," says the Seattle Times
But, “This kid didn’t even create the original blaster worm,” posts p2pnet reader Drake.
“I remember an article about how the FBI knew about this all along and asked him to create a variant, or something like that.
“Anyway, as much as I hate viruses like blaster, I think 18 months is way too much especially since he just modified the original blaster virus.”
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See:-
Blaster worm – Blaster Master sentenced, p2pnet, January 29, 2005
time and money – MINNEAPOLIS, MINNESOTA MAN ARRESTED FOR DEVELOPING AND RELEASING B VARIANT OF BLASTER COMPUTER WORM, Department of Justice, August 29, 2003
lenient – Blaster hacker receives 18-month sentence, Seattle Times, January 29, 2005
January 29th, 2005 at 3:06 pm
Yeah, they put him up as a big example merely, the US govt has a bad history of doing that to people who commit petty computer crimes, and they still never caught the person that wrote the real Blaster worm.
I blame the idiots in the world who cannot keep their computers updated with the latest security patches. Alot of these patches, if applied, closed thes holes months before there was ever a Blaster worm. If businesses lose money due to these worms, then its their own damn fault, if they cannot hire clued people to keep the machines patched, then let them suffer. Rather then take it out on some kid who just modifies a worm. These are estimated losses, and should not ever reflect how much sentencing time he should ever recieve. The real world losses are probably much much considerably less then the estimated losses.
Its the same as the tactics used by the music industry, they pull these loss figures out of their head and use it to make things look much worse then they really are. Get a worm, oh well, clean it out, not a big deal. Blaster wasnt a data killing worm, all it done was use alot of bandwidth. Easily cleaned with instructions from SARC’s site. So the millions lost from this worm is a load of crap. Patch the machines to begin with, and keep them firewalled as well, and you wont get these dumb worms anyways.
Its a shame people get so much time for doing petty things that doesnt even threaten anyones lives, yet rapists and common criminals get the same amount of time that is beans compared to harmless things like windows worms. These worms are fueled by idiots, not their creators. And sadly idiots make up 90% of the computer using population, and that includes in and outside businesses.
January 29th, 2005 at 5:54 pm
serves the asshole right maybe when he gets out he can actually do something productive with his life instead of causing misery to untold thousands of clueless computer users (such as aol and mac users )
January 29th, 2005 at 5:56 pm
also fact is a lot of elderly people use the internet now and you cannot expect them to be shit hot on applying patches to protect their computer s from little shits writing viruses , serves the bastard right.
January 30th, 2005 at 10:45 am
hahahaha. Those hardened criminals are going to really work him over. If he never had a girlfriend before, now he gets to BE ONE.
May 19th, 2005 at 2:04 am
listen hear butt-wipe, federal prison is not like state prisons. it’s not like he mudered someone or stole from someone. he was a kid behind a computer screen and not even the original author of the worm. you must be one of the poeple whos computer was infected other wise you wouldn’t be putting this kind of stuff on the internet. get a life and hopefully you never find yourself dropping the soap!!!!!!!!!!!!