ANOTHER PLEADS GUILTY IN BOTNET HACKING CONSPIRACY

http://www.daemonnews.org

The following case is about Tomas James and Frederik Jack also Smith's co-defendant, who pleaded guilty for intentionally cause damage to a protected computer and to commit computer fraud. 
According to the information available ,Smith, Thomas and Edward agreed and assisted each other in causing damages, transmission of a program, information, code,or command, by using an Internet Relay Chat.
Smith and Edward also initiated code application  file by the name NETTICK, which had usage to hack into another person's account computer and control the system. 
Smith was the member of online forums like Darmarker and CcpowerForums.com and in 2006 he posted a public message on several forums in which he offered an executable program to control a bonter for $750, or the source code for 41200.
in addition, he used Edward's website kidindustries.net and demonstrated to engage in a distribution denial of service attack by attaching an IP address at an Internet service provider in North Texas. on the same year, Smith and Edward also accessed, without authorization the T35.net user database, which provided free personal and business Internet web-hosting services for thousand of users. The database subjected to hack by Smith and Edward contained confidential user identification and passwords which they downloaded. Moreover, on October 3, 2006, Smith helped Edward in order to defacing the T35 and make the confidential information include user, IDs, and passwords available to public.  
Each of them faces a maximum statutory 5 years in prison, a 250,000 fine and restitution. 
My comment  
The case that it was discussed above,it's authorize and legal use of computer as a tool for doing criminal actions and includes several scenarios: hacking and unauthorized access, defacing which is unauthorized  modification , DOS  or denial of service that all come under computer crime, and they are punishable by law.
One another thing that it needs to be mention here is, when Smith Helped Edward  for defacing T35 , this is the case that is known as Aiding and Abetting and the person who assist is going to be guilty of an offence, the punishment will be the same as that of the principal offender but cannot be more.  


source:
"Another Pleads Guilty in Botnet Hacking Conspiracy - Silobreaker." Welcome - Silobreaker. Web. 08 Nov. 2010. .