Hacking Activities Cause Botmaster Underground Member to Receive Maximum Penalty

Jeanson James Ancheta's conviction to five years in jail is a heavy blow to the „Botmaster Underground" hacker organization, who might think twice next time before attacking the US governments' networks.

Ancheta, a 21-year-old hacker, had been charged with taking over 400.000 computers connected to the Internet and renting them to spammers and to other hackers, and in January, he pleaded guilty to federal charges of conspiracy, fraud and damaging U.S. government computers.

"Your worst enemy is your own intellectual arrogance that somehow the world cannot touch you on this," U.S. District Judge R. Gary Klausner was quoted by Reuters as saying.

Prosecutors say this case is unique because Ancheta was charged for obtaining profits from the attacks by selling access to the infected computers to other hackers and by planting adware, Reuters also says.

The authorities say that the hacker obtained more than $107.000 for his services, and that's only in 14 months since he started the activity.