New Zealand’s genius teenage hacker pleads guilty on all counts

By Janine de Blois

18 year old, Owen Walker, also known as ‘Akil’, has pled guilty to all six charges against him. Walker headed a group of hackers calling themselves the “A team”, and was responsible for infecting 1.3 million computers with adware. Receiving about forty cents per computer from adware companies, Walker’s share of this was around $40.000 NZ (about $32,000 US). He committed the cyber crime from home over the period of a few years. He was arrested after an 18 month investigation by police in New Zealand, along with the FBI and Dutch Authorities.

Walker said the DoS attack, which cost the University of Pennsylvania about $13,000 US, was not intended. He had gained access to their system through another offender, Ryan Goldstein, a student of the university. Walker’s intent was to update his botnet which infected about 20,000 computers around the world. It was the sophistication that caught the attention of the FBI, who said, “What he developed was a significant enhancement on previous bot code and is considered by international cyber crime investigators to be amongst the most advanced bot programming encountered.”

Walker himself was fascinated by his ability to control an army of robotically linked computers. A police officer who initially interviewed Walker believes it was a case of his obsession in computer gaming spilling over into the real world. Walker, has Asperger’s Syndrome, which causes severe difficulties in social situations. He was schooled at home and was self-taught on the computer. His parents knew he was making money on the internet, but had no idea he was doing anything illegal. He used the money he made to buy computer equiptment and invest in his parents’ business. Walker’s sentencing is due to be handed down next month.