Record sentence for spam crime

Especially as I deal with an insane amount of comment and trackback spam on the blog, I am pleased to note a record federal sentence for a spam-related computer crime.  Here are some highlights from articles here and here discussing the crime and sentence:

A Downey man was sentenced to nearly five years in federal prison Monday for using malicious software to seize control of 400,000 computers and then selling access to the "zombie" machines to spammers and hackers.  Prosecutors said the 57-month sentence for Jeanson James Ancheta, 21, was the longest ever handed down for spreading computer viruses. The case also marked the first federal prosecution for using such hacking methods for financial gain.

Ancheta pleaded guilty in January to selling access to so-called botnet software that can remotely control computers to deliver spam and orchestrate distributed denial-of-service attacks against websites. Such attacks send overwhelming streams of requests to the sites, causing them to shut down. Ancheta advertised his botnets online under the heading "botz4sale."