Student Faces Ten Years Inward Prison Theatre For Creating As Well As Selling Limitless Keylogger

Influenza A virus subtype H5N1 21-year-old old Langley High School student, who won a Programmer of the Year Award inwards high school, pleaded guilty on Fri to charges of developing in addition to selling custom key-logging malware that infected thousands of victims.

Zachary Shames from Virginia pleaded guilty inwards a federal district courtroom in addition to straightaway faces a maximum penalization of upward to 10 years inwards prison theater for his yesteryear deeds.

Shames was arrested this summertime spell he was working equally a technical intern at Northrop Grumman, a safety in addition to defence authorities contractor, developing front-end site code in addition to backend Java software in addition to managing a MySQL database, according to what appears on his Linkedin page.

According to a press release from the USA Department of Justice, Shames developed a keylogger inwards 2013 that allowed users to bag sensitive information, including passwords in addition to banking credentials, from a victim's computer, spell he was however a high schoolhouse pupil inwards 2013.

Keylogger is malicious software designed to tape every keystroke on a victim's computer.

Shames developed the showtime versions of now-defunct keylogger known equally Limitless Logger Pro, which he sold for $35 on the infamous Hack Forums, according to an anonymous safety researcher quoted yesteryear Motherboard.

Shames "continued to alter in addition to marketplace position the illegal production from his college dorm room," at James Madison University inwards Harrisonburg, Va. in addition to sold it to to a greater extent than than 3,000 people who, inwards turn, infected over 16,000 victims, the USA Attorney's Office said.

The keylogger malware developed yesteryear Shames slow turned out into a powerful tool.

According to TrendMicro (pdf), apart from key-logging, Limitless KeyLogger tin also recover draw of piece of occupation organisation human relationship names in addition to passwords from many pop applications, such equally Apple Safari, Firefox, Opera, Google Chrome, Bitcoin wallets, Core FTP, DynDNS, FileZilla, Internet Download Manager, Internet Explorer, Spotify, in addition to more.

Shames pleaded guilty inwards an Alexandria courtroom, in addition to Judge Liam O'Grady accepted his plea.

Shames straightaway faces a maximum penalization of upward to 10 years inwards prison theater in addition to has been sentenced to live on scheduled for June 16, 2017.