Virginia College Pupil Admits to Developing PC Malware

A pupil of some Virginia college recently agreed to developing and selling malicious software which helped grab passwords as well as banking details.

Aged 21 and named Zachary Shames, the pupil belonging to Great Falls admitted guilt on Friday inside an Alexandria federal court after getting accused of helping and encouraging PC-hack through the software's creation that's typically a 'keylogger,' as well as trading it with over 3,000 users. According to U.S. attorney Dana J. Boente for Virginia's eastern district, the malicious software contaminated over 16,000 PCs. Liam O'Grady, U.S. District Judge accepted the accused student's guilty plea.

Last year i.e. 2015, Shames prepared the dean's listing of JMU. Currently, he's facing a maximum of ten-yrs inside the clink. The accused used hacker forums where he would canvass his spyware that logged keystrokes and cost $25. The software when loaded onto any victim's PC intercepted sensitive information, particularly passwords. The spyware tried encrypting itself for staying off anti-virus programs, while the recorded keyboard hits got transmitted onto one website -limitlessproducts.org.

Court documents reveal that Shames ultimately got caught at the hands of FBI agents following sale of his spyware program from his PayPal account.

On a website he claims his own, the malware writer boasts being at James Madison University as a junior studying for Computer Science degree course. He writes having done 2 internships at firms inside Northern Virginia and that he had been working there over the last 3 summers in the capacity of technical intern and software engineer intern respectively. Nobody knows exactly if law enforcement got in touch with those firms. Washingtonpost.com posted this, January 13, 2017.

During prosecution, it was recorded that Shames developed malware referred to as keylogger which let its users filch sensitive info like banking credentials and passwords stored on any victim's PC.

Prosecutors further said that Shames traded his keylogger with 3,000-and-more people who then utilized it for contaminating 16,000-and-more PCs. The early developments of Shames' keylogger was done when he was studying in a Northern Virginia high school after which he suitably changed the illegal code and touted it from the dormitory room of his college.

» SPAMfighter News - 1/19/2017