FBI tracks down three cyber criminals

Washington (DC) - As part of the FBI’s massive "operation bot roast" mission, the federal bureau has found and arrested three men accused of infecting millions of computers worldwide.

Robert Soloway, James Brewer, and James Downey are accused of multiple felonies. Soloway faces 35 individual charges including e-mail fraud, identity theft, and money laundering. He’s accused of sending several million junk e-mail messages.

The FBI says Downey used a botnet to attack an Internet relay chat (IRC) server. Brewer, on the other hand, caused the most physical damage of the three recently indicted men.

Brewer is accused of infecting over 10,000 computers with viruses, including two hospitals in the United States last year. This caused hospital computers to freeze and reboot, "causing significant delays in the provision of medical services," claims the indictment.

The FBI has a coordination center set up at Carnegie Mellon University, where it works on tracking down "bot herders", as well as trying to notify users whose computers may have been compromised.