01 Jul 2004
Spanish Trojan creator receives two year jail sentence
 |
| Óscar López Hinarejos has been sentenced to two
years in prison. |
The Spanish media has reported that a 27-year-old man has
received a two year prison sentence for spreading the Cabronator
Trojan horse which broke into innocent PCs, stole personal data and
launched denial of service attacks.
In what is believed to be the first case of a malware author
being sentenced to jail in Spain, Óscar López Hinarejos was found
guilty of infecting over 100,000 computers with the intention of
stealing confidential information from them. Hinarejos was said to
have used the online pseudonym "El Gran Oscarin".
"A strong message is going around the world to all virus
writers: if you are caught the penalties can be serious," said
Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for Sophos. "Everyone
involved in writing and distributing viruses should think very
carefully about the implications of their malicious behaviour."
In January 2003, a British virus writer was sentenced to two years in
jail for distributing a number of viruses he had written.
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