18-year-old New Zealander was Infamous Bot Herder
Posted by Laureli Mallek Tue, 08 Apr 2008 15:30:00 GMT
Owen Thor Walker, an 18-year-old whose online alias was Akill, assumed responsibility for invading a network of 1.3 million computers, causing havoc at the University of Pennsylvania in 2007, and skimming an as-of-yet unknown amount of money from banks in the Netherlands.
The incident at UPenn occurred when Walker and Ryan Goldstein were attempting to update their botnet. While the denial of service attack affecting UPenn was accidental, it did lead to the arrest of Goldstein, who in turn directed police to Walker. The New Zealand Herald writes “While the New Zealand police were waiting for the FBI to finish its investigations” the NZ police began investigating several large deposits into Walker’s bank account. These were traced to ECS International, a company reported to be connected with similar situations. Walker claims to have sold his code to other people, and no one seems to know what happened to the skimmed money.
According to Technology Review eight people have been indicted, plead guilty, or convicted and an additional 13 warrants have been issued in the United States and abroad in association with this case. Walker’s supposed role as “kingpin” has not lead to additional charges. The ITNews Australia writes that Judge Arthur Tompkins “would not be considering a custodial sentence” due to Walker’s youth when writing the code—he claims to have been 15 at the time.
Botnets are devious. The New Zealand police are quoted by NZ Herald as saying Walker’s code is “considered by international cyber crime investigators to be among the most advanced bot programming encountered,” as it spread automatically, disabled anti-spyware software, deleted rival bots, and functioned mostly without detection. The Anti-Spyware Coalition provides an excellent definition of botnets:
A type of Remote Control Software, specifically a collection of software robots, or “bots,” which run autonomously. A botnet’s originator can control the group remotely. The botnet is usually a collection of zombie machines running programs (worms, Trojans, etc.) under a common command and control infrastructure on public or private networks. Botnets have been used for sending spam remotely, installing more spyware without consent, and other illicit purposes.
Botnets have been used for a variety of nefarious purposes from those listed above to last year’s attack against Estonia.
