Alleged Kiwi botnet mastermind in court
Black sheep
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An 18-year-old suspected of masterminding a botnet-fueled international cybercrime network has appeared in a New Zealand court.
Owen Thorn Walker, of Whitianga in New Zealand's North Island, was charged with a variety of computer hacking offences including two counts of accessing a computer for dishonest purposes, two counts of accessing a computer system without permission, and a single count of damaging a computer system as well as possessing hacking software, Radio New Zealand reports. If convicted, Walker faces up to 10 years imprisonment.
Prosecutors allege that Walker (AKA AKILL) was the chief of a gang that infected an estimated 1.3 million computers worldwide as part of a scam to harvest online banking and credit card credentials. Members of the gang also made money by running spam and denial of service attacks, as well as by loading compromised PCs with adware.
Walker was released on bail following his appearance in The Thames District Court, in northern New Zealand. The teenager was arrested in late November as part of a larger FBI-led operation aimed at cracking down on the trade in compromised PCs, codenamed Operation Bot Roast. ®
COMMENTS
Thames Magistrate's Court?
Isn't the Thames Magistrate's Court in London, not Northern New Zealand?
Is Northern New Zealand an odd euphemism what would otherwise be South Eastern England?
Are you sure you weren't thinking of The Thames District Court, in the North Island?
bloody hell
i stumbled upon AKILL quite a few years ago. Well actually he stumbled into me, my honeypot to be exact which was mimicking a ircd hosting a botnet. He questioned why he couldnt steal my botnet and then said i mustve done a good job encrypting them and commanding em privately. We talked for quite a bit and he told me of living in new zealand. I remember he had many .edu machines and entire networks under his control, logging on thru every japanese and chinese university, to flex his e-peen to me i supposed. then he just disappeared. Imho botnet's are to low to middle class white kids what the drug dealing game is to many inner city kids. A fast illegal way to make money using the skills you learned growing up.
I think this is time for zome Ozlander vernacular...
Bloody Kiwi!
Ah well, back to what passes for normality for me. And for those not from the Antipodes, please note that there are far more sheep in Oz (~120,000,000) than in the land of the long white cloud (~45,000,000). Most people are surprised by this, and the average Kiwi's reaction to this observation is generally the classic Kiwi euphemism, "Well, I'll be be buggered."
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