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NZ Teen Arrested as 'Spybot Mastermind'

Posted by Zonk on from the i-was-nowhere-near-this-hard-working-as-a-teen dept.

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."

9 of 113 comments (clear)

  1. Important to point out... by kaos07 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I think it's important to point out that the kid 'Akill' was released without charge and that he didn't make any money out of the operation. Some sources are reporting that the group "raked in" $20 million, whereas that figure comes from estimates of "economic losses" so are probably inflated or meaningless depending on where the sources come from.

    1. Re:Important to point out... by fireboy1919 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      that figure comes from estimates of "economic losses" so are probably inflated or meaningless depending on where the sources come from.

      What would be realistic? Lets say that he stole the use of 100,000 computers in his botnet. At 2Mil, each computer would have $20 in economic losses.

      That doesn't seem at all unrealistic. If it costs $20 of your time (i.e., if it takes an hour to clean and you make $20 an hour, or something to that effect), then it's $20 in economic loss. If the resulting slowdown costs $20 of your productive time, same thing.

      Sure, some people don't lose that much by not being productive, but some lose a lot more. $20 average sounds entirely reasonable - probably a little low, actually. They probably didn't infect that many machines.

      Keep in mind that I'm not even bringing up what is done with those computers - I'm just talking about losses caused by putting the spyware on machines, and haven't begun to talk about what is done with it.
      If bad things were done with things, it would certainly drive the average cost per infection up a lot, which would make it easy to cause that much damage while infecting far fewer machines.

      Point is that this isn't like assuming that every download=a sale lost. It isn't outside the realm of possibility at all.

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  2. Doesn't sound right to me by Silver+Sloth · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The teenager cannot be named for legal reasons, but uses the online identity "Akill". He was later released without charge, but police said they expected to interview him again. and then

    The teenager was the "head of an international spybot ring that has infiltrated computers around the world with their malicious software", Kleintjes told New Zealand national radio. and then

    Kleintjes said the teenager had written software that evaded normal computer spyware systems, then sold his skills to hackers. "He is very bright and very skilled in what he's doing," Kleintjes said. "He hires his services out to others." It looks to me like some script kiddie is being puffed up as 'Head of an internationa spybot ring'. I'm not saying he's innocent but there's a lot of spin in this.
    --
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  3. This kid is a scapegoat... by 8127972 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    ... as he likely did this using stuff found on the Internet for giggles. Perhaps the authorities should focus on the real spybot ringleaders out there. You know the ones that work for organized crime and cause untold amounts of damage? Those are the ones we should worry about.

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    1. Re:This kid is a scapegoat... by Billosaur · · Score: 2, Insightful

      No, the kid is eye candy for law enforcement... he does the perp walk so that they can be seen to be doing something about the problem.

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  4. Re:They hate competition by Heian-794 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    You people annoy me sometimes; "The FBI are purging all tha data that is...." AARGH!!!!! I need more coffee...

    Hopefully you import your coffee from Colombia or somewhere other than the UK where plural verbs are used routinely for organizations in this sense. 'Manchester United are wankers' and the like. The closest thing I can think of in the US is sports teams with those silly-sounding singular mass-noun nicknames like the Tampa Bay Lightning. "The Utah Jazz haven't been the same without Karl Malone"; "The Minnesota Wild are winning again", etc.

    [/multinational inclusivist grammar nazi]

  5. Is everyone missing the real point? by Brickwall · · Score: 3, Insightful
    This kid created malware. He is obviously (at 10??) bright enough to understand what malware can do. He didn't choose to notify banks, credit card firms, etc., that they were subject to his attacks; instead, if I RTFA correctly, he chose to sell this method to criminals.

    I have two daughters, 10 and 13, who seem to have no compunctions about releasing all their personal data on Facebook and Myspace. I keep telling them security is important, and they shouldn't be releasing their full names, school, pets, etc., as those are usually part of passwords. I'm not sure they listen. I'm also sure that's because they have no idea of the stakes involved. We keep the value of their trust funds secret, but the two are worth over $300k today, and we are budgeting $500k for their education in the future. If this NZ kid's exploits prevented either one of my daughters from attending the school of their choose, I'd want to make him pretty pay dearly.

    My suggestion: put him in jail for a few months (not years); then he might realize his freedom is worth more to him than other people's money.

    --
    What was once true, is no longer so
  6. Re:Yoohoo!!! by flyingsquid · · Score: 3, Insightful
    We finally won't have to deal with malware anymore! The guy has been arrested!

    When a farmer wants to get rid of the coyotes, he doesn't shoot them all. He shoots one. Just one. And then leaves it there to rot in his field. Coyotes are pretty smart- they see the dead coyote, realize going on his farm isn't a safe thing to do, and he's often good for the rest of the year.

  7. Re:Like I said... by The+Great+Pretender · · Score: 2, Insightful
    Lets ignore Wikipedia for the moment, although I understand it is an exemplary reference for everything and look at an editors text book "Sabin, William A. The Gregg Reference Manual. 8th Edition. Macmilliam/McGraw Hill. NY: 1992.", where you will find that "Rule: Use a singular verb for a collective noun when the group is acting as a unit" (Section 1019).

    Saying all this you may want to contact the University of Texas, Austin Department of Chemical Engineering and tell them to modify its comments in its communication instruction http://http//www.engr.utexas.edu/che/techwriting/morehelp/grammar.cfm. Likewise the University of Iowas Creative Writing program would also disagree with you, but I don't have an elink to my hard copied notes. There's some more US educational institutions I can point you to, but I'm sure they're not as reliable as Wikipedia.

    --
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