A student hacker has been arrested for creating spyware and selling it to over 3,000 people, resulting in 16,000 systems being infected.
Zachary Shames, 21, a student from Great Walls, Virginia, admitted to creating and selling spyware designed to track what a victim types. He created a keylogger that records everything typed on a computer and sold it to more than 3,000 people who infected over 16,000 victims with it.
These details were revealed in a press release from the U.S. Department of Justice. Now, Shames has pleaded guilty to aiding and abetting computer. He will be sentenced on June 16, with a maximum sentence of 10 years, if the sentence is approved by Congress.
Shames is currently a student at James Madison University. He developed the first version of the spyware in 2013, while still a high school student in Northern Virginia. He then began refining and marketing his spyware from his “dorm room at his university.”.
Shames' LinkedIn profile states that he was also a "College Technical Intern" for Northrop Grumman Corporation in McLean from May 2015 – August 2016, where he says he worked for the FirstNet team and was responsible for coding front-end websites, back-end servers, and managing a database there.
While the information about the malware referred to as “malicious keylogger software” presented by the feds is vague, the malware appears to be called “Limitless Keylogger Pro,” according to Motherboard. Furthermore, someone using the username Mephobia has been marketing this software on Hack Forums since March 14, 2013. The seller was asking for a $35 lifetime subscription, and payment was made via PayPal and bitcoins.
