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Less Than Resilient
That their arrest and prosecution was inevitable was obvious to just about anyone familiar with the facts of the case, but for SoBe, the pill was just too bitter to swallow. In the immediate weeks after Ancheta's arrest, SoBe continued to maintain the case was so much grandstanding by a desperate and ineffectual agency.
"I think resilient is going to get off with nothing served," he said three weeks after Ancheta was indicted. "Probation at max."
His nonchalance was fueled by a combination of confidence in the superiority of their tactics and a warped belief that their commandeering of hundreds of thousands of PCs was perfectly acceptable, or in any case, no different than the way most online businesses behaved.
"Google toolbar is basically the same thing zangocash and loudcash toolbars are," he explained. "Me and james just changed it so it installed automatically. Take AOL AIM for instance, they sneak tons of shit into there installers. You think your installing aim but you get aol and toolbars and other stuff. I dont know why, but i really don't mind installing spyware on peoples computers."
SoBe was also fond of discussing his continuing work developing malware. "I've been working on a new worm," he proudly proclaimed in late November of 2005, just a few weeks after his friend was arrested. Once it took hold of a user's machine, it sent every buddy listed in AOL Instant Messenger a message containing a link to a silent installer.
"I mean if one of your good friends youve known for a while sends you an im. Hey look at this picture. Would you click on it? Most people click it without thinking twice. Its an endless possibilities of ways to make money. EVERY SINGLE bot you are getting, is from the USA. that is major money."
Boredom Breeds Bots
Over the next several months, SoBe seemed to have trouble figuring out how to pass the considerable amount of time he had on his hands. He had been warned by the feds that despite his age, he wasn't immune from prosecution and his chances of getting pinched would increase if he didn't walk away from his botnet activities.
"I feel myself slowly slipping from the bots etc," he said a couple months after Ancheta was arrested. "Moving more towards real life pretty much. motorcycles a lot funner." SoBe also spent time on Shadowserver.org, a network of volunteers dedicated to shutting down organized cybercrime, where he gave details about ways he and Ancheta had perpetrated their crimes.
Besides taking fast rides on his dirt bike, SoBe's other non-hacking pastimes included partying and downloading and watching movies and TV shows. On New Year's Eve, he said he attended a party that he didn't remember leaving.
"I woke up the next morning in my bed 10 miles away from the party I was at," he said. "How I made it up 2 flights of stars though, i dont know."
Before he blacked out at the party, SoBe recalled a "typical crackhead looking guy with no shirt on and he was bleeding" after pulling a knife on someone around the corner and demanding a eighth of an ounce of cocaine. The person around the corner ended up stealing the knife away and cutting his would-be assailant.
SoBe's beloved dirt bike
"That's one thing I'll never understand, people robbing each other over a dime bag of weed and such," SoBe said.
But even as he tried to turn away from illegal hacking, SoBe found the seduction of illegal hacking too powerful to give up for good. In February 2006, after an extended spell of rain, he declared: "im pretty bored, weather has sucked lately, only done like 50 miles of riding in 3 days now. gonna start on a new bot."
Asked repeatedly over more than two years why he didn't apply his considerable energy to white-hat endeavors, SoBe said that was never something he saw himself doing. "To get a job like that, you need degrees, etc, all of that takes time," he explained. The money he and Ancheta generated, by contrast, "was nearly instant". Beyond that, he said, tracking miscreants for a security firm wouldn't provide the kind of thrill he got from being the miscreant himself.
Last page: The Botnet Victims Fund - Resilient 'coerced' to work 37.5-hour week at $1.15/hour
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COMMENTS
covering the traces
This is a good story for the public but for the underground this guy means nothing. He wasn't more than a skiddie, he didn't code shit, but being stupid is not an excuse in hacking. He deserved to got jailed, I just wonder how was he able to operate so long.
I did remember to their #bottalk channel and to those loosers from bluehell. I always though that the whole netconnection of that eLEET irc server is tapped and these dumbasses were flaming, flaming and flaming about how much power do they have.
He obviously wasn't too intelligent otherwise he would have make an own bot and drop his irc protocol based shit whatever RX/SD/AGO etc he used and try to code at least a http+ssl based or p2p bot. That wasn't his work either.
That he got 400K boxens also hard to believe because the new avs, isp security hardenings, idses etc.. So what I think about him, he bought crypters, source codes, since he got money with his adscams. His behaviour wasn't so different from the spammers.
But I agree with one thing, he didn't screw his life up with hacking, and playing world of warcraft. I spent almost all my life at the front of the computer, rather going out with friends partying, because I had to live in a scum country so don't fucking talk about American Dream TM. This is a life style and why would it be worst than someone else's life which ends with 10 hours work, alcohol and cigarettes and family problems...
@ Matthew Anderson (again)
They were not 'kids', one was a teenager the other an adult, when sentenced both were adults. Cowardice (hiding behind their screens, doing things they would never do in person) doesn't work as an excuse or a legal defence, either.
We've all experienced 'these kids' by the bucket-load, what on earth makes you think you're somehow more qualified than the rest of us? Mostly they are fairly average boys (very few girls) with a disturbed personality and an over-inflated ego. They tend to rely on tools made by others but claim all manner of 'mad skills' and typically have a very shaky grasp of even such basics as networking protocols.
The author mostly did what was required to keep a dialogue going, but in any case, sympathy is not the same as excusing the behaviour.
@ David Hicks
That's all very well but as I said, you do not appear to know what you are talking about.
Again, I say they are just kids, drawn into feeling they are protected behind their computer screen. Doing things they would not do if it was face to face.
I will say it again, I have experienced these kids by the bucket load and I know how they work and think. Not from reading articles but by being amongst them. If you are a mechanic I will believe you when you say my gasket is blown, tell me, other than reading articles on ell rego, what experience do you have in these things?
Judging by your comments, I am imagining none.
Even the author displayed some sense of sympathy, this is because he conversed with the younger of the two. This gives the author a reasonable voice where as you are talking from the third party.
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