NZ Teen Arrested as 'Spybot Mastermind'

Josh Fink writes "The Guardian has an interesting piece on 'Akill', a teenager from New Zealand who was the ringleader of a hacking ring. The economic impact of the ring may have totaled £9.7m. 'The teenager was the "head of an international spybot ring that has infiltrated computers around the world with their malicious software', Martin Kleintjes told New Zealand national radio ... The FBI estimates that more than 1m computers have been infected, and puts the combined economic losses at more than $20m (£9.7m).' Eight people have been charged, pleaded guilty or have been convicted since June. The FBI really has been putting a crackdown on botnets / spyware recently."

Comments

Cut the head off?

[Caption Wierd]

When the "mastermind" is arrested, does a botnet die or continue some sort of pointless frankenstenian existence?

and then

[darthflo]

and then

The teenager is said to have infiltrated top secret government networks throughout the universe. "He created both Linux and Windows in the lunch breaks of his freshman year in college and plans to take over control of the world after finishing his PhD next year", Kleintjes said.

I, for one, ph34r our new NZ script kiddie overlords.

Re:Yoohoo!!!

[m4ximusprim3]

so you're saying we should kill him and shove his body into the tubes?