WELLINGTON, New Zealand — Police detained the suspected teenage kingpin of an international cyber-crime network accused of infiltrating 1.3 million computers and skimming millions of dollars from victims’ bank accounts, officials said.
Working with the FBI and the police in the Netherlands, New Zealand police raided the home of the 18-year-old in Hamilton and took him into custody along with several computers, said Martin Kleintjes, head of the police electronic crime center.
The case is part of an international crackdown on hackers who allegedly assume control of thousands of computers and amass them into centrally controlled clusters known as botnets. The hackers can then use the computers to steal credit-card information, manipulate stock trades and even crash industry computers, authorities say.
