Person
Banned
The authors of the Trojan program “TK worm”, Jordan Bradley, 21, and Andrew Harvey, 23, were jailed yesterday ending an international investigation into the spread of the malicious program.
While sentencing Bradley to three months in jail and Harvey to six months, judge Beatrice Bolton said the custodial sentence was necessary and would serve as a public warning. She said she accepted that there was no motive of a financial gain which had “substantially reduced the length of the sentence”.
The two British hackers were arrested in 2003 following a simultaneous raid on their homes – Harvey’s in Sherburn Village and Bradley’s in Darlington. British detectives arrested Bradley while he was still at his terminal just before dawn. Both were part of an Anglo-American hacking group that called themselves the “TH34T Krew”.
This gang is responsible for the spread of the ‘TK worm’ which has infected some 18,000 computers around the world; these included some systems at the US Department of Defense. The British agency National High-Tech Crime Unit (NHTCU) said the virus had caused million of pounds worth of damage.
Deputy head of the NHTCU Mick Deats said such gangs were known to steal money and data from companies. An annual survey meant to gauge the extent of damage by cyber crime, revealed that a total of 166 companies lost over £70 million to various forms of malicious programs.
Like most Trojans, the TK worm also seems like harmless information but it replicates itself and spreads over the Internet. Once an infected computer was connected to the Internet, it would automatically become part of a network of computers that were under the control of the gang.
In their defense earlier both the hackers had claimed to have created the program in order to create their own secure Internet chat room. It was learnt that they even intended to gain credit card details using the worm, but there was no evidence to prove so. The court was told that they wished to “impair the operations of those computers” in order to gain control over them, convincing judge Bolton that their motive was only "control" and not financial gain.
The investigation was triggered by a US based computer consultant who noticed malicious software on his network after using the online chat facility. In trying to trace it he also had an online chat with someone calling himself ‘Doom’ (Harvey’s online pseudonym).
While sentencing Bradley to three months in jail and Harvey to six months, judge Beatrice Bolton said the custodial sentence was necessary and would serve as a public warning. She said she accepted that there was no motive of a financial gain which had “substantially reduced the length of the sentence”.
The two British hackers were arrested in 2003 following a simultaneous raid on their homes – Harvey’s in Sherburn Village and Bradley’s in Darlington. British detectives arrested Bradley while he was still at his terminal just before dawn. Both were part of an Anglo-American hacking group that called themselves the “TH34T Krew”.
This gang is responsible for the spread of the ‘TK worm’ which has infected some 18,000 computers around the world; these included some systems at the US Department of Defense. The British agency National High-Tech Crime Unit (NHTCU) said the virus had caused million of pounds worth of damage.
Deputy head of the NHTCU Mick Deats said such gangs were known to steal money and data from companies. An annual survey meant to gauge the extent of damage by cyber crime, revealed that a total of 166 companies lost over £70 million to various forms of malicious programs.
Like most Trojans, the TK worm also seems like harmless information but it replicates itself and spreads over the Internet. Once an infected computer was connected to the Internet, it would automatically become part of a network of computers that were under the control of the gang.
In their defense earlier both the hackers had claimed to have created the program in order to create their own secure Internet chat room. It was learnt that they even intended to gain credit card details using the worm, but there was no evidence to prove so. The court was told that they wished to “impair the operations of those computers” in order to gain control over them, convincing judge Bolton that their motive was only "control" and not financial gain.
The investigation was triggered by a US based computer consultant who noticed malicious software on his network after using the online chat facility. In trying to trace it he also had an online chat with someone calling himself ‘Doom’ (Harvey’s online pseudonym).
