{"id":55,"date":"2006-08-29T16:52:39","date_gmt":"2006-08-29T14:52:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/softonic-en-dev.elussier.redtonic\/blog\/?p=55"},"modified":"2025-07-02T03:02:00","modified_gmt":"2025-07-02T10:02:00","slug":"fighting-off-botnets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/fighting-off-botnets\/","title":{"rendered":"Fighting off botnets"},"content":{"rendered":"<p align=\"left\">A story today from <a title=\"arstechnica\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/arstechnica.com\/news.ars\/post\/20060828-7601.html\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Arstechnica<\/a> reveals that 21 year old Christopher Maxwell received a 37 month jail sentence for launching a botnet which, according to the source, allowed him and his friends to reap as much as $100,000 dollars. Not all hackers out there have an evil mind bent on wreaking havoc and anarchy in government and institutional networks, but the truth is they sometimes don&#8217;t realize the <a title=\"consequences\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/seattlepi.nwsource.com\/local\/282674_botnet26.html\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">consequences<\/a> of their actions. Maxwell&#8217;s botnet caused Seattle&#8217;s Northwest Hospital to switch to its &#8220;disaster plan&#8221; and teachers from Colton Unified School district &#8220;lost crucial instructional time&#8221;. Maxwell did measure how far his actions could take him when the sentence came down  though .<\/p>\n<p>As institutions rely more and more on networks and computerized information, we&#8217;re bound to see this type of news more often and probably at a greater scale. That&#8217;s why it&#8217;s essential to remind time and time again that you need to protect your PC. You can&#8217;t go without <a title=\"lavasoft\" href=\"http:\/\/ad-aware.en.softonic.com\/ie\/12381\">Lavasoft&#8217;s Ad-Aware<\/a> or <a title=\"spybot\" href=\"http:\/\/en.softonic.com\/ie\/20443\/spybot_search_&amp;_destroy\">Spybot&#8217;s Search and Destroy<\/a>. Both these solutions are free, easy to use and analyze your PC fairly quickly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A story today from Arstechnica reveals that 21 year old Christopher Maxwell received a 37 month jail sentence for launching a botnet which, according to the source, allowed him and his friends to reap as much as $100,000 dollars. Not all hackers out there have an evil mind bent on wreaking havoc and anarchy in &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/fighting-off-botnets\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Fighting off botnets&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2004,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","wpcf-pageviews":0},"categories":[],"tags":[],"usertag":[],"vertical":[],"content-category":[],"class_list":["post-55","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t<!-- All in One SEO 5.0.4 - aioseo.com -->\n\t<meta name=\"description\" content=\"A story today from Arstechnica reveals that 21 year old Christopher Maxwell received a 37 month jail sentence for launching a botnet which, according to the source, allowed him and his friends to reap as much as $100,000 dollars. 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