A New Zealand teenager allegedly at the center of an worldly cybercrime network presented Friday in court where he was charged with computer hacking crimes.

Computer programmer Owen Thor Walker, 18, was charged with two counts of accessing a computer for dishonest purpose, damaging or interfering with a computer system, possessing software for committing crime, and two counts of accessing a computer system without authorization.

The charges carry a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison.

Walker did not enter a plea when he presented briefly in Thames Magistrate’s Court in northern New Zealand. He was released on bail. Bail conditions were not immediately available.

Walker was arrested in November last year in the northern city of Hamilton as part of an worldly inspection into a cybercrime network accused of infiltrating 1.3 million computers and skimming millions of dollars from victims’ bank accounts.

“We worked closely with U.S. and Dutch authorities on that analysis. that arrest is significant not

just to New Zealand but the worldly community as well,” police spokesman Detective Inspector Peter Devoy said.

“Very few folks who carry out that sort of offending are ever prosecuted so the resolution of that case has huge worldly implications,” he said. He did not elaborate.

The case is part of an universal crackdown on hackers who allegedly assume control of thousands of computers and amass them into centrally controlled clusters known as botnets.

The hackers can thereupon use the computers to steal credit card data, manipulate stock trades and even crash industry computers, authorities said when the case first surfaced in late November.

When he was first detained, police said the teenager, known by his cyber identification “AKILL,” was head of an worldly spybot ring that has infiltrated computers round the world with their malicious software.

Police said he was additionally responsible for placing advertising spam on about 1.3 million…

Orginal post by Top Tech News