Aussie hacker charged with infecting 3,000 computers

A 20-year-old Australian man has been charged with infecting more than 3,000 computers around the world with a virus designed to capture banking and credit card data, police said.

The man, whose name will not be released until he appears in an Adelaide court on 4 September, has been charged with several computer offenses that carry prison terms of up to 10 years, South Australia state police Detective Supt. Jim Jeffery said in a statement.

Police also uncovered information that will identify other offenders, Jeffery said.

The man, who lives in the state capital, Adelaide, is also accused of illegally creating a capacity to disable computer systems by bombarding them with unwanted traffic from up to 74,000 computers he controlled around the world.

This type of sabotage is known as a distributed denial of service attack.

Police have not said whether the man allegedly used stolen banking information to commit identity fraud.

The arrest followed a three-month investigation involving state and federal computer crime detectives.