19-year-old fast flux botnet pioneer agrees to plead guilty

The author of a Trojan that broke new ground in botnet circles has agreed to plead guilty to secretly infecting thousands of victims' machines so that he could steal their personal data and launch attacks on websites.

Jason Michael Milmont, 19, of Cheyenne, Wyoming, admitted to creating the so-called Nugache Worm, a Trojan that spread through AOL instant messenger and modified Limewire installation programs. Once clicked on, the malware made unwitting users part of a botnet, which Milmont used to steal user names, passwords and account numbers of those who were infected.