Botnets are big business—at least according to authorities who announced the first U.S. case against an alleged computer hacker, who authorities believe netted $60,000 in cash and a BMW from a personal army of zombie computers.

Federal authorities arrested a 20-year-old California man Thursday and charged him with running a network of 400,000 compromised computers called a "botnet," including computers used by the U.S. government for national defense.
Jeanson James Ancheta, of Downey, Calif., was arrested by FBI agents Thursday morning and charged with spreading a Trojan horse program, called "rxbot," and using it to build a network of around 400,000 infected computers.
He is also charged with illegally uploading advertising software ("adware") onto compromised systems.

Huge networks of compromised computers, known as "bots," have become a pressing problem in recent months.
Security company Symantec Corp. said that its researchers identified an average of 10,352 bots a day in the first half of 2005, compared to around 5,000 a day in December 2004, according to the company's most recent Internet Threat Report.

This news article was written on November 4, 2005, quoting eWEEK.