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A British man who distributed a Trojan disguised as a patch for the game 'Call of Duty' has been sentenced to a year and a half in prison.

"Lewys Martin, 20, of Deal in Kent, used the malware to harvest bank login credentials, credit card details and internet passwords from the compromised Windows PCs of his victims," writes The Register's John Leyden. "Martin then apparently laundered the credentials via underground cybercrime forums, earning $5 or less for every credential, directing proceeds of his criminal activity towards an offshore account in Costa Rica, funds which remain beyond the reach of UK police."

"Here's where it gets really interesting: Martin wasn't caught in the act of selling these dodgy hacks," writes Kotaku's Luke Plunkett. "He was caught with a friend while they were breaking into a school, something he's apparently done a number of times."

"When police officers raided Martin's home following his burglaries, they found more than 300 credit card details and passwords as well as details of a fraudulent £3,000 (about $4,700) bank loan in the name of Lewys Manser," writes SecurityNewsDaily's Matt Liebowitz. "Martin was charged with three counts of burglary and fraud charges."

"Amazingly, when Martin appeared at Canterbury Crown Court last November, sentence was deferred to allow him to attend a computer course at university in Canterbury," writes KentOnline's Paul Hooper. "But in March this year -- and while on bail -- he and another man were caught smashing their way into the Walmer Science College in Deal, causing £300 of damage before attempting to steal a projector, computer, hard drive, walkie-talkies and other equipment."

"Game players would be wise to pay attention to the technique used by Lewys Martin to infect computers," writes Sophos' Graham Cluley. "It's not uncommon for malware to be distributed in the form of cracks and hacks for popular computer games -- if you run unknown code on your computer to meddle with a video game, you might well be allowing malware to insidiously install itself too."