Nineteen-year-old Jeffrey Lee Parson of Hopkins, Minnesota faces between 18 and 37 months in prison, plus a fine in the million-dollar range, according to John McKay, US Attorney for Western Washington.
Parson pleaded guilty to creating the first Blaster copycat, which he named teekids after the handle t33kids he used on his web site. The web site domain was registered to his home address, allowing the FBI to nab him easily.
He pleaded guilty specifically to charges of intentionally causing and attempting to cause damage to a protected computer, under a plea deal that seems to have limited his sentence, which could have been up to ten years under earlier charges.
Parson admitted to modifying Blaster.A with a backdoor, and seeding it to fifty computers he had previously compromised. The Blaster worm attempted to launch a denial of service attack on a Microsoft domain.
Prosecutors said 48,000 computers were infected by Parson’s variant. US Attorney, Annette Hayes, estimated that the government will be asking for restitution in the millions of dollars. Sentencing is scheduled for November 12.
