19-year-old 'fast flux' botnet agrees to plead guilty
The author of a Trojan that broke new ground in botnet circles has
agreed to plead guilty to secretly infecting thousands of victims'
machines so that he could steal their personal data and launch attacks
on websites.
Jason Michael Milmont, 19, of Cheyenne, Wyoming, admitted to
creating the so-called Nugache Worm, a Trojan that spread through AOL
instant messenger and modified Limewire installation programs. Once
clicked on, the malware made unwitting users part of a botnet, which
Milmont used to steal user names, passwords and account numbers of
those who were infected.
Nugache was being circulated as early as early 2006 and spawned one
of the first botnets to use a decentralized system to send instructions
to drones, according to
security researcher Dave Dittrich. Rather than relying on a single
command and control channel, the zombie network used a peer-to-peer
mechanism to communicate. Such fast flux technology, as it eventually
came to be called, fundamentally changed the cybercrime landscape by
making it much harder to shut down botnets. (Other botnets such as
Storm also use fast flux.)
Over time, Milmont added new features to Nugache. A graphical user
interface made it easy to access infected machines from his home
server. It allowed him to issue a command to a single machine, which
would then transmit the command to other machines, until it had spread
through the entire network. The program contained a keylogger and was
also capable of sniffing sensitive information stored in Internet
Explorer to spare users the hassle of having to remember passwords for
online banks and other sensitive websites.
The software was invisible to the Windows task manager in versions
NT, XP and 2000. At any given time, Milmont had anywhere from 5,000 to
15,000 machines under his control.
According to a plea agreement signed by Milmont, he used his botnet
to launch distributed denial-of-service attacks against an unnamed
online business located in the Los Angeles area. The agreement went on
to document the way he used personal information he lifted from his
victims to fatten his wallet.
After sending a command that instructed infected machines to
transmit captured passwords and other information, he would order items
online and take control of victims' accounts by changing the addresses
and other details that were associated with them. In April 2007, for
example, he used stolen credit card information to make a $1,422
purchase from Hinsite Global Technologies and had items shipped to a
vacant resident in the Cheyenne area.
To prevent victims from discovering his scheme, Milmont replaced
phone numbers associated with compromised accounts with Skype numbers
he created and purchased using credit card data he had harvested from
his botnet.
Milmont faces a maximum of five years in federal prison and a fine
of $250,000. He's also agreed to pay almost $74,000 in restitution.
Milmont has agreed to appear in federal court in Cheyenne, where he
will plead guilty to one felony charge. The case was brought in Los
Angeles and was investigated by the FBI.