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| The Trojan's author has been sentenced to six
months in prison. |
A US court has sentenced a Louisiana man to six months in prison
for infecting WebTV users with a Trojan horse that made nuisance
phone calls to the emergency services.
David Jeansonne, 41, of Metairie, Louisiana, pleaded guilty last
month to causing a threat to public safety and causing damage to
computers. On Monday 14 March he was sentenced to six months in
prison, and ordered to pay Microsoft more than $27,100. US District
Judge Ronald M Whyte sentenced Jeansonne to serve an additional six
months home detention.
The WebTV service, now known as MSN TV, allows subscribers to
connect to the internet using their television. Jeansonne's Trojan
horse was emailed to users in 2002, posing as a program which would
change colours on their TV screens. However, the attached file
reset the settings on the user's WebTV box making it dial 911 next
time it attempted to connect to the internet. Approximately 20
users are said to have received the email, and 10 reported that the
local police either telephoned or visited their home in response to
the emergency phone call.
"It's good to see firm action being taken against another author
of malicious code," said Graham Cluley, senior
technology consultant for Sophos. "Making prank phone calls to the
police is a dangerous occupation which could have life threatening
repercussions for innocent members of the general public, writing a
program to automatically cause this kind of nuisance demonstrates a
whole new level of moronic behaviour."
Sophos continues to recommend that all internet users are wary
of unsolicited email attachments.
More than 100 million users in 150 countries rely on Sophos as the best protection against complex threats and data loss. Sophos is committed to providing security and data protection solutions that are simple to manage, deploy and use and that deliver the industry's lowest total cost of ownership. Sophos offers award-winning encryption, endpoint security, web, email, and network access control solutions backed by SophosLabs - a global network of threat intelligence centers. With more than two decades of experience, Sophos is regarded as a leader in security and data protection by top analyst firms and has received many industry awards.
Sophos is headquartered in Boston, US and Oxford, UK. More information is available at www.sophos.com.