Teenage botherder arrested in New Zealand
International cooperation also leads to eight arrests in the US.
Police in New Zealand have arrested an 18-year-old youth believed
to be the herder of a botnet of 1.3 million computers, reports the BBC.
The hacker, who uses the online name 'Akill', has
been released after questioning, but is still being
investigated.
The arrest was made following an operation involving local police as well as
police in the Netherlands and the FBI. The latter announced
yesterday that its operation 'Bot Roast' has
led to the arrest of eight individuals since it began in June. Most of the individuals are in
their early twenties and used botnets for activities such as DDoS
attacks, sending spam and spreading malware. Thirteen further search warrants have also been served.
A law enforcement panel discussion at VB2007 highlighted the fact that there is
a good deal of room for improvement in the level of cooperation achieved between international police forces fighting
cybercrime. It is encouraging, therefore, not only to see successful cooperation between international forces, but also
to see it leading to concrete results - giving criminals the message that even on the Internet, they are not invincible.
30 November 2007
Tags:
arrest, botnet, cybercrime, fbi.
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