Teen got nothing from cyber crime

A Waikato teen at the centre of a multimillion-dollar global cyber crime ring made no personal financial gain according to the US Attorney's Office.

The FBI believes the 18-year old whose cyber ID is AKILL was the ringleader of a group which hacked into more than a million computers at an economic cost of $NZ25.9 million.

It is claimed the group took control over a Philadelphia University server in 2006, and with it 50,000 computers.

Ryan Brett Goldstein, 20, of Pennsylvania has since been indicted by a federal grand jury. It is understood Goldstein based himself at the university and his targets included internet relay chat operators and others he bore grudges against.

The PC World website quoted Michael Levy, chief of computer crimes with the US Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, as saying Goldstein offered AKILL who has not been publicly identified log-in rights to a website and malicious Trojan Horse software, but received no money.

Netsafe executive director Martin Cocker said the bust was huge for police.

"This is part of a ring that is deliberately hacking into a million computers and stolen about $26 million. It's a massive crime."

Botnetting was done predominantly for financial gain and private computers were those most targeted.

Police national headquarters head of electronic crime Maarten Kleintjes said the Waikato man could face various computer offence charges including unauthorised access of a computer or being in possession of hacking tools.

"It was just a matter of time. But this is a first."

Mr Cocker said computer owners should protect themselves with up to date firewall, antivirus and antispyware software.

- © Fairfax NZ News