By ANTARA News
Wellington : A New Zealand teenager was convicted Tuesday for his central role in a global cyber crime ring which infected at least 1.3 million computers worldwide and caused millions of dollars in losses.
Owen Thor Walker, 18, allegedly led a group of international computer hackers who infected computers worldwide and caused economic losses of 20 million US dollars, according to police.
The thin, long-haired teenager pleaded guilty to six computer crimes in a court in Thames, near his home south of Auckland and is due to reappear on May 28 for sentencing.
Some of the charges carry a maximum sentence of up to five years in prison.
Walker, who taught himself programming and used the online name “Akill”, began committing the alleged crimes early last year and continued until late 2007, a prosecution summary said.
The teenager, who suffers from Asperger’s syndrome, a mild form of autism, designed a unique encrypted virus that was undetectable by anti-virus software and had made nearly 40,000 dollars (31,450 US) from his programs, police said.
International investigators considered Walker’s programming to be “amongst the most advanced” they had encountered, the prosecution summary said.
The malicious software allowed access to user names and passwords, as well as credit card details, and was used by other criminals to commit crimes.
New Zealand police cooperated with the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the United States as well as Dutch authorities to uncover the network.
The investigation started after an attack involving 50,000 computers crashed the server at the University of Pennsylvania in the United States in 2006.
Walker was living with his parents when he committed the crimes, but they believed he was doing legal computer programming work, a police statement was quoted by AFP as saying.