14 DAY TRIAL // Australian Federal Police (AFP) arrested a 25-year-old unemployed truck driver yesterday who is accused of hacking into the servers of many companies and organizations.
Authorities started the investigation that led them to David Cecil, 25, of Cowra, six months ago after an attack against the University of Sydney's website.
The attacker who signed himself as EVIL @ EFNET claimed at the time to also have access to three quarters of the university's network.
The mysterious hacker struck again in mid-June when he broke into the network of Australian web hosting provider Distribute.IT and deleted data and backups.
The incident affected up to 4,800 websites hosted by the company. After suffering a massive hit to its credibility and public image Distribute.IT was sold and renamed by the new owners.
The investigation was assisted by Platform Networks, a wholesale VSP solutions provider who began working with AFP's High Tech Crimes Commission after detecting malicious traffic on its network back in December.
As soon as it realized the traffic was generated by a hacker who infiltrated its systems, the company notified the authorities.
"In December 2010 during routine systems and network monitoring, Platform Networks became aware of unlawful traffic transiting our network," Platform Networks CEO David Hooton told The Register. "We commenced a six-month investigation, collecting information and actively monitoring traffic which led us to believe that there was malicious traffic transiting our network which was of a nature that threatened national infrastructure," he added.
This allowed investigators to monitor Evil's movements for six months and eventually gather enough evidence to charge David Cecil with 48 counts of unauthorized access to data and one of unauthorized data modification. "In May and June, we identified a number of companies hacked by this individual," said AFP Commander Grant Edwards during a press conference.