Recently, a security consultant admitted to a lot of dirty acts; infecting people with malware, stealing usernames and passwords, and eavsdropping on financial transactions which will obviously get in to some big trouble with the legal system.  Well, because of all the things this person has done, U.S. prosecutors stepped things up a bit and did something that has never done before; use federal wiretapping laws against the botnet ‘army’ this person has accumulated over time.  While this is the first time this has ever been done, it definitely won’t be the last.

A Los Angeles computer security consultant agreed Friday to plead guilty to using computer spyware that he planted in other people’s computers to steal identities, U.S. federal prosecutors said.

John Schiefer, 26, was accused of using “botnets” — armies of infected computers — to steal the identities of victims across the country by extracting information from their personal computers and wiretapping their communications, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles.

Plotting and Scheming

This is the first time someone in the United States has been charged under the federal wiretap statute for conduct related to botnets, prosecutors said.[more]

Tags: Malware