Computer hacker pleads guilty

[mark748]

Tuesday, July 27, 2010 » 02:56am

An Adelaide man has pleaded guilty to a virus attack on thousands of bank customers worldwide.

Anthony Scott Harrison, 20, was charged in August last year with initiating a virus that attacked 3,000 computers in order to steal banking details and credit card information.

Harrison pleaded guilty in the South Australian District Court on Monday to seven charges, including four counts of modifying computer data to cause harm and possessing data to commit a serious computer offence.

The court previously heard Harrison had the capability to strike a further 74,000 computers around the world and bring down international websites.

Sentencing submissions will be heard on September 24.

[MasterZuFu]

I actually tried to call this guy IRL for a phone interview. Couldn't get a hold of him though. Sucks. lol

[mark748]

really? i think he's a bit of an idiot for even trying to do this but if he suceeded then i would think he is kinda awesome

[MasterZuFu]

It's really not that hard to infect someone. It's about who you infect, not really how you do it. There's SO MANY ways to infect someone, I mean really...it's ridiculous. But if you infect someone who's a computer security nut, you are likely to get caught, and if you live in Australia where cyber laws are idiotically strict, yeah...you're gonna end up like this guy did if you are nothing more than a skript kiddie.

[mark748]

i doubt he would be a script kiddie and spreading isnt that hard but 3000 is a fairly high feat. the most ive gotten was 10 but ive stopped ratting now and i think im going to go into sql exploits like on vbulletin forums.

[MasterZuFu]

How about the guys who got busted with the world's biggest botnet, they don't even know anything about computers really, just infected people through yahoo messenger.

[Mitch]

People accept and open almost every file without thinking. and also trust their anti virus to much IMO.
"Oh my antivirus doesn't say anything it must be safe then"

"Like things such as free membership generators for games or whatever" Nothing in life is free.
If you think for a second you'd know its fake.

I've worked at a comp store for a while, and seen people have loads of stupid virusses.
I guess they only learn once they got their comp destroyed or so.

-Mitch

[mark748]

thats what happened to me. a few years ago when we got broadband i started downloading fps games and while looking for counter strike i ran some of the dodgyest files around. the computer would randomly restart and all stuff like that but that was then and now im alot more aware

[hyperstream]

Well i guess if thats the kind of stuff you want to do (fraud) then these things will happen.

Ive seen some big botnets on some irc networks, pretty heavy stuff, all these zombies sitting in a chat room, ready to be commanded!
Ive been infected many times myself, mainly downloading pirated software. People this its safe to download from trusted people on torrent sites, but its really not. They bind small .exe files to the setup's of the cracked applications. And they infect you upon running it(you wont even see it) some of them compeletly hide themself from your system, with a driver and you wont even know it was running!

Pirated Software is never really free! - Not worth the risk, there is normally a open source alternative to most things out there that cost money(application wise)

[BreakOut]

This is crazy. that guy must have been smart.