14 DAY TRIAL // Owen Thor Walker, 18, a computer programmer from Hamilton, New Zealand, is facing up to ten years of jail time for allegedly being the head of an international cyber crime network. Additional charges brought against him are: accessing a computer for dishonest purposes on two counts, damaging or interfering with a computer system, possessing software for committing crime and an additional two counts of accessing a computer system without authorization. Also, the network is said to have turned thousands of computers into a botnet after infecting them.
He walked out on bail pending the verdict, conditions not available to the press. Walker was arrested in November 2007 in an action part of an international investigation into a cyber crime network which was accused of infiltrating 1.3 million computers and skimming millions of dollars from the victims' bank accounts, news.cn reports.
What is even more important than the sentence to hammer down on the teenager, the circumstances that lead to his arrest showed that an international network of Internet security based on cooperation is not the dream many believe it to be. "We worked closely with U.S. and Dutch authorities on this investigation. This arrest is significant not just to New Zealand but the international community as well," police spokesman Detective Inspector Peter Devoy said. "Very few people who carry out this sort of offending are ever prosecuted so the resolution of this case has huge international implications," he told the cited source.
The international crackdown on hackers continues and the authorities hope to get some relevant information from Walker, as who the other members of the network are. That's not likely to happen but here's to hoping it does, and that one after the other, all of the criminal networks will be stopped. I wouldn't hold my breath, though.