One Sentencing, One Guilty Plea In Anti-Botnet Operation

Recent results in the DOJ and FBI’s “Operation Bot Roast”:

Robert Matthew Bentley of Panama City, Florida, on June 11 was sentenced to 41 months in prison and ordered to pay $65,000 in restitution by US District Judge Richard Smoak in Pensacola. Bentley pleaded guilty in March to conspiracy and computer fraud counts; he admitted overloading Newell Rubbermaid’s computer network by using his botnet to install ad-serving software on over 100 computers; he was paid to do it by a now-defunct Dutch adware company. Others companies were targeted and unnamed co-conspirators are under investigation (Techworld, DOJ).

Gregory King of Fairfield, California on June 10 pleaded guilty to two counts of transmitting code to cause damage to a protected computer before US District Judge Lawrence Karlton in Sacramento. King admitted using a 7,000-computer botnet he controlled to launch distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks against Killanet and CastleCops. The latter is a well-respected online security community which specializes in analyzing, exposing and fighting malware, phishing and other computer security concerns. King agreed to serve two years in prison, although the court is not bound by the recommendation; sentencing is scheduled for September 3 (Wired, DOJ).