Autistic teenager admits creating $26m web virus
Dressed in jeans and sneakers, Owen Thor Walker, 18, of Whitianga, looked young and scared when he appeared in Thames District Court yesterday to face six charges.
The FBI accused Walker, known online as Akill, of being the ringleader of a group of international programmers that set up a botnet - a network of hacked computers controlled by a single computer on the Internet.
FBI spokeswoman Cathy Milhoan said its cyber division had a partnership with New Zealand authorities and had kept an eye on international prosecutions.
Cyber crime is third on the list of priority for the head of FBI, behind counter-terrorism and counter-intelligence.
FBI director Robert Mueller said botnets were the weapon of choice of cyber criminals.
Walker - who has no formal computer training - pleaded guilty to two charges of accessing a computer for dishonest purpose, damaging or interfering with computer systems, possessing software for committing crime, and two charges of accessing computer systems without authorisation. All charges were laid under computer provisions of the Crimes Act.
Though some of the charges carry sentences of up to five years imprisonment, Judge Arthur Tompkins indicated he was not considering jailing Walker, who has Aspergers syndrome - a form of autism.
He was reportedly bullied at school and left in Year 9 to study by correspondence. He started experimenting with bot programmes and created his own code, continually developing, redesigning and adding to it.
International cyber crime investigators considered Walkers to be among the most advanced bot programming they had seen, the prosecution summary says.
His bot code contained a number of special features that protected it from discovery, allowing it to spread automatically and identify and destroy rival bot code.
One feature automatically disabled any anti-virus software on an infected computer and prevented the software from being updated.
Walker, also identified online as Snow Whyte and Snow Walker, set up the command and control of his botnet using computer servers outside New Zealand, mainly in Malaysia. He either leased server space or accessed servers illegally.
Prosecutors say the exact number of computers affected by his bot code may never be known, but it was tens of thousands.
Dutch authorities established that Walker was responsible for 1.3million illegal installations of adware - software which an Internet user unwittingly downloads that causes disruptive and unwanted advertising to appear in various programs.
His total income from this activity has been assessed at $36,174.65.
A statement read in court said Walkers parents knew he was making money from the Internet from their home in Whitianga. He had told them he was contracted to do computer programming and they didnt realise he was engaged in illegal activity.
It is believed Walker received 40 cents for every computer infected.
He was arrested in November after an 18-month investigation by New Zealand police, in collaboration with the FBI, secret service and Dutch authorities.
In bailing him to May 28 for reports, Judge Tompkins said the pre-sentence report would cover home detention, community detention, community work and a fine. He said he would not specify the sentencing outcome.
DEFINITIONS
*Adware: Software that causes disruptive and unwanted advertising to appear on users computer screen. Often downloaded unwittingly when user clicks on advert, downloads program or opens attachment.
* Bot: Malicious software with ability to log keystrokes and capture data %26ndash; for example copying bank account passwords %26ndash; or relay spam.
*Botnet: Collection of computers, also known as zombies or robots, that can be controlled remotely through bots by a bot-herder.
*Spam: Unsolicited or junk e-mail, often sent out in massive quantities and through zombie computers. E-mail users without anti- spam protection can find their inbox choked with unwanted adverts.
A spammer who has command and control over a botnet can send messages from thousands of computers.
