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| Jeanson James Ancheta has been sentenced to a
jail term of almost five years. |
The majority of computer users are disappointed by the jail
sentence meted out by the US courts to Jeanson James Ancheta,
the 21-year old who was yesterday imprisoned for seizing control of
400,000 PCs to install revenue-generating adware. Ancheta also sold
access to the zombie network to others who wished to launch denial
of service attacks and spam campaigns.
A web poll of 275 PC users, conducted by Sophos, found that 60%
of respondents think Ancheta's 57 month jail sentence - which is
the toughest ever handed out to a malware writer - is too soft. A
mere 24% believe the punishment fits the crime, while just 16% feel
it is too harsh.
"These results prove that there is little love lost between PC
users and cybercriminals - there is a distinct lack of sympathy
from legitimate IT users for those people who try to make their
lives harder," said Graham Cluley, senior
technology consultant at Sophos. "Ancheta's crimes caused distress
and financial loss to thousands of individuals and companies and,
as a result, the US justice system came down on him tougher than
ever seen before. But it seems this is still not enough for the
majority of people."
Participants of the poll were also asked to suggest alternative
punishments for virus writers. A common suggestion was that those
convicted of cybercrimes should be banned for life from using PCs
and other technology.
"PC users want cybercriminals neutralised. Many feel that the
only way to achieve this in the long-term is to deprive hackers and
virus writers of the thing they love and know the best -
technology," continued Cluley.
Sophos continues to recommend companies protect their desktops
and servers with automatically updated
protection against viruses, spyware, and spam.
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.