South Australian Police Arrested Man for Spreading Computer Virus

A man from Adelaide (Australia) is charged by the police for his involvement in one of Australia's biggest computer hacking using computer viruses.

Police of South Australia claims that 20 year old man from Adelaide's west worked from his home. The Police also claimed that he targeted nearly 74,000 systems globally by using a software which he himself had developed. The malicious program developed by him was capable of blocking websites.

Besides, the software had the potential to steal personal information including credit card from infected computers.

Detectives also state that the man developed the means to start viral attacks worldwide by initiating denial-of-service attacks, impacting several systems.

Barry Blundell, Detective Senior Sergeant, states that the accused used a harmful code with an intention of stealing monetary details and penetrated almost 3,000 susceptible systems, as reported by ABC NEWS on August 13, 2009.

He further declares - that is the reason why they always asked users to regularly check their bank accounts statement and make sure that the transactions done by them was authentic.

Barry Blundell also added that this was the largest scam that they had observed in Australia. He discussed the extent of the scam with some of his co-workers and they agreed with his statement.

The Police assert that the man was indulged in selling the program to vulnerable systems and attacked them. It is known that there has been around one arrest in this connection and inquiry is on.

The Police inform that the arrest of the man from Adelaide's West has provided them clue that can lead to more crooks.

The man was held after a three month investigation by the electronic crime divisions of the Australian Federal Police and South Australian Police.

The man has been accused of charges which include unofficial alteration of system data, supply and control of a system virus with plan to commit a grave computer offence, illicit working of a computer system and theft. He will appear in Adelaide Magistrates Court next month (September).

For now, the senior detective informed it was hard to know how much money had been stolen from the hacked accounts.

Related article: South Korea Becomes Infamous For Being World’s Fifth Spamme

» SPAMfighter News - 8/27/2009