Crocker has also pleaded guilty to violating anti-spam laws and the abuse of internet connections.
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A New Yorker who infiltrated thousands of computers in order to run a lucrative spam bot pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court.
Prosecutors alleged that Crocker sold access to a botnet composed of computers infected by malware spread through Facebook accounts.
According to Reuters, Eric Crocker aka Phastman from Birmingham, New York, has admitted that he and other hackers from the forum broke into at least 77,000 computers. Crocker and his associates were paid from $200 to $300 for every 10,000 infected systems by customers who used the computing power to send high volumes of spam, prosecutors said.
According to a Reddit post submitted a year ago, the virus sends a Facebook message to the affected users’ friends, with an attached malware file that runs as soon as it’s clicked.
Crocker together with other Darkode hackers would sell off get access to to afflicted desktops to certain people needing to write industrial emails.
He will be sentenced on 23 November.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation and the US Attorney’s Office in Pittsburgh led the investigation into Darkode, known as Operation Shrouded Horizon.
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Facebook Spreader was featured on Darkode, a long-running secretive cybercriminal forum that was shut down by law enforcement last month.
