Printed from www.pcpro.co.uk
Teenager convicted of million dollar hacks
Posted on 1 Apr 2008 at 08:59
A teenager accused of being the ringleader of an international cybercriminal group has been convicted.
Police claim that the 18-year-old teenager, Owen Thor Walker, led a group which hijacked more than one million computers, acquiring information which allowed them to steal over £12 million from victims' bank accounts.
Walker was questioned in November as part of the FBI's crackdown on Botnets, the name given to strings of hijacked computers used to commit cybercrimes. He has now confessed to six charges of using computers for illegal purposes and is awaiting sentencing in May.
Police say that Walker wrote viruses to evade anti-spyware systems whilst in school, and then began selling his skills to criminal groups.
Author: Stuart Turton
advertisement
- Why Britain's watchdogs have fewer teeth than goldfish
- Tabbed documents: how to make Office 2010 great
- Outlook 2010 People Pane – does it spell death to Xobni
- Microsoft Outlook 2010 screenshots
- Co-Authoring in Word 2010 and SharePoint Foundation 2010
- Microsoft Outlook 2010 screenshots: Backstage view
- Flash 10.1: Developing for Desktop and Device
- Microsoft Office 2010 screenshots: Recover unsaved items
- Microsoft Word 2010 screenshots: Text Effects
- Microsoft Word 2010: inserting screenshots
- Getting to grips with Microsoft's IT Health Environment Scanner
- Virtualise your servers
- The changing face of travel gadgets
- Build your own distributed file system
- The bulletproof Dell that costs an arm and a leg
- Microsoft Office 2010 Technical Preview: Q&A
- Lawnmowers, the TyTN II and one odd insurance request
- There'll never be a bulletproof OS
- How far can we trust apps?
- Five nice touches in Outlook 2010
advertisement
