Citing parental neglect and psychological problems, US District Judge Marsha Pechman gave hacker Jeffrey Lee Parson a much lighter penalty than the sentence of 10 years in prison and a quarter million dollar fine, that he could have received had he not pleaded guilty.
On Friday Judge Pechman sentenced Parson to 18 months in jail and 10 months of community service for propagating the crippling MS Blaster Internet worm in 2003 that wrought havoc on up to 50000 computers around the world with both personal and business pc's affected.
“Many of the mental-health problems from the household you grew up in contributed to this problem,” Pechman told Parson, adding that he was much less mature than his 18 years at the time of the crime.
Pechman told Parson: “What you've done is a terrible thing. Aside from injuring individuals and their computers you shook the foundation of the system.”
Parson had admitted last August to intentionally causing and attempting to cause damage to a protected computer by authoring and spreading a version of the worm that spread rapidly on the internet, clogging computer networks.
Using the internet name, "teekid," the high school student from Hopkins, in the state of Minnesota, initially pleaded not guilty, but changed his plea after striking a plea bargain with prosecutors in order to reduce his sentence.
MS Blaster, also known as the LovSan virus, exploited a weakness in Microsoft's Windows XP and Windows 2000 operating-system software. It infected computers and then commanded them to attack a Microsoft website.
The company learned about the attack early on and took steps to prepare for it. Nonetheless, Microsoft was affected by the attempt, and spent more than $1 million investigating Parson's Blaster variant and helping customers whose computers were infected.
