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Paraplegic 'sextortion' hacker sentenced to 6 years


A paraplegic Mexican hacker who used computer malware to spy on - then extort from - several female computer users in the United States was sentenced to six years in a US federal prison. "Sextortion hacker" Luis Mijangcos, 32, was convicted for using malware to control his victims' webcams and log their keystrokes. "This was nothing short of a sustained effort to terrorize victims. ... A lot of people suffered-and suffered greatly," US District Judge George King said in imposing the sentence, according to a report in UK's The Inquirer. King also described the attacks as "psychological warfare" and "cyberterrorism," according to the Inquirer report. California-based news site OC Weekly also quoted the judge as telling Mijangos his behavior was "no joke." "Society has to understand that if you engage in this type of behavior, it's no joke. You are going to jail and going to jail for a long time," King told Mijangos, according to OC Weekly. Unauthorized access OC Weekly reported Mijangos previously pleaded not guilty to 16 federal charges, but pleaded guilty in March to two federal counts related to his tricking about 230 people into downloading malware that allowed him to hack into their computers. The report cited the U.S. Attorney's office as saying he particularly pleaded guilty in Los Angeles federal court to intentionally accessing a computer without authorization and illegally intercepting an oral or wire communication. OC Weekly said the Federal Bureau of Investigation found Mijangos used peer-to-peer networks to infect computers and disguised the malware as popular songs, to lure victims into downloading them. The malware in turn spread itself to contacts in the victim's address book. Mijangos would look for sexually explicit or intimate images or videos of the victims. Upon finding them, he would contact the victim and threaten to distribute the images or videos if they did not make additional videos for him. He also intimidated them into not calling the authorities, saying he would know if they did because he controlled their computers. The OC Weekly report said Mijangos even used stolen usernames and passwords to access the victims' email and social networking sites - and their credit card data. But he was eventually arrested by the FBI, which acted on a tip from the Glendale Police Department, which in turn had received a complaint from a victim. Psychological games The UK Inquirer report said prosecutors also claimed Mijangos even played psychological games on his victims. Prosecutors said one of the women who testified in court compared the psychological effects of sextortion to those of domestic violence that she experienced in the past. — TJD, GMA News

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