Young Australian Hacker Anthony Scott Harris Pleads Guilty

Anthony Scott Harrison, 20, from Black Forest, a suburb of Adelaide (capital city of South Australia), has finally confessed to the charges of developing a computer virus last year (2009) - forcing authorities to release a global red alert.

The hacker pleaded guilty on July 26, 2010 before the South Australian District Court to four counts of altering computer data to cause inconvenience and harm, one count of deceitfully manipulating a machine to personal benefit and two counts of controlling or possessing data to commit serious offenses.

As per the information disclosed, the hacker was arrested in July 2009 after a 20 week long global investigation that revealed the evidences that he was responsible for generating a banking Trojan. As per the authorities, this young hacker infected more than 3,000 computers with his malware in Australia and abroad to steal credit card and other bank account details.

According to the security experts, the exact Trojan or malware was not named, but it was supposedly used to initiate attacks on extra 74,000 computers, signifying that it also functioned as a botnet client.

Although the reports don't mention it, the security experts state that the most likely target of the malware was the Windows operating system, be it Vista, Windows 7, Windows XP or any other operating system. The prevalence of malware for the Linux and Mac operating system is very small than Windows PCs and the bulk of the info stealing and other banking malware is focused at PCs running Windows.

Judge Paul Rice of the Adelaide Court ordered Harrison to appear before the court for sentencing on September 24, 2010, until which he will remain on bail, as reported by the softpedia on July 26, 2010.

It is not the first time when any Australian hacker has pleaded guilty. In March 2009, David Anthony McIntosh, 28, a Northern Territory IT worker, was also jailed for three years for causing millions of dollars damage to the government systems by crashing several government services at Berrimah Prison, Royal Darwin Hospital and the Supreme Court on May 5, 2008.

Related article: Young Liberals’ Worker Found Guilty of Hacking

» SPAMfighter News - 8/4/2010