MSBlast Hacker Pleads Guilty

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August 12, 2004 (9:43 AM EDT)

The Minnesota man who spread a modified version of the MSBlast worm over the Internet last summer pleaded guilty on Wednesday and faces 18 to 37 months in prison.

Jeffrey Lee Parson, a 19-year-old from Hopkins, Minn., admitted that he created MSBlast.b last August by downloading the original MSBlast worm, making changes, and then sending it back onto the Web.

In the plea agreement, Parson pleaded guilty to felony charges that he intentionally caused and attempted to cause damage to a protected computer -- a crime that comes with a 10-year maximum prison term -- in return for a shorter sentence, according to published reports.

Last September, Parson entered a plea of not guilty, and accused the government of inflating its case against him.

The creator of the original MSBlast, which hit the Internet a year ago Wednesday -- August 11, 2003 -- has not been arrested. Microsoft has posted a $250,000 reward for any information leading to the arrest and conviction of the MSBlast author(s), but so far it's gone unclaimed.

Parson's variant was a relatively minor irritation compared to the impact of the original MSBlast worm, which by some estimates struck millions of machines. At the time of his arrest, analysts and law enforcement officials called Parson a lightweight hacker.

Parson will also be required to pay restitution for the damage done by his worm. Although the amount has not been set, it could easily run into the millions.

U.S. District Judge Marsha Pechman also warned Parson to steer clear of any computers and stay off the Internet.

"I hope you understand that you are not going to touch -- you are not even going to look at a computer," she was quoted as saying by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, one of the newspapers which has covered the case in federal court in Seattle.