Scottish Bot Herder Gets 18-Month Prison Sentence

A Scotsman was sentenced to 18 month in prison and ordered to pay £5,000 for his role in an operation that involved infecting thousands of computers worldwide with malware.

Matthew Anderson, 33, from Drummuir, Scotland, was a member of an international gang of hackers known as m00p, which developed and distributed several computer trojans during 2005 and 2006.

In many cases the malware was attached to fake emails sent to millions of users and the infected computers joined together in IRC-controlled botnets.

One of the trojans was even distributed via rogue emails masquerading as notifications from Finnish anti-virus vendor F-Secure.

The malware allowed Anderson, who used the online handle "warpigs," to steal passwords and personal files from the infected computers, including CVs, photographs, wills and medical records.

It also gave him the ability to control webcams. Shots of his victims, sometimes in compromising circumstances, were found on his computer.

"Your motivation throughout, apart from the relatively small sums of money that you obtained by way of payment from the business leads, was the pleasure and satisfaction that you derived from achieving such a massive invasion into the personal lives of so many others and also the sense of power that invasion gave you," said Judge Geoffrey Rivlin, when delivering the sentence yesterday at Southwark Crown Court.

"Whilst you may not have been engaged in fraud, it is fair to say that in an age in which computers play such an important part in the lives of so many people and businesses, an offence of this nature inevitably raises great concern and consternation," he added, according to the BBC.

Anderson pleaded guilty on October 22, 2010, to offenses under the Computer Misuse Act. One of his accomplices, a Finnish programmer named Artturi Alm, received an 18-days prison sentence and community service time in 2008.