Teenager Who Created Blaster to Spend 18 Months in Prison
Monday, January 31, 2005
(SNN) Jeffery Lee Parson, the creator of Blaster-B internet worm, will spend 18 months in Prison and 3 years on supervision. The 19 year old may also be forced to pay up to $1.2 million in restitution, no small task for a young man with a prison record. The virus contained a secondary payload of a denial of service attack against Microsoft, who incurred the $1.2 million dollar loss cleaning up after the worm.
the creator of Blaster-B internet worm, will spend 18 months in Prison
Parson is exactly what you would expect in the typical virus writer. He is overweight, socially awkward, has received very little parental supervision and has a history of mental illness. It could be theorized that with all these things going for him, it was impossible for Parson not to write a virus.
It's not a healthy thing to lock yourself in a room and create your own reality
Parson’s tech savvy judge showed understanding of the typical internet user. The Internet "has created a dark hole, a dungeon if you will, for people who have mental illnesses or people who are lonely," said US District Judge Marsha Pechman. 'It's not a healthy thing to lock yourself in a room and create your own reality," she concluded. It remains unclear where the judge considers it healthy to create one’s own reality, but the courtroom may be the obvious choice.
Blaster-B infected an estimated 48,000 computers when it spread across the internet in August 2003. The primary effect of the worm was to force backdoor access to infected systems. Appropriately, for the next 18 months, Parson will learn what it is like to be the subject of forced backdoor access.
