IT Spot

On Monday, Owen Thor Walker, an 18-year-old bot herder from Whitianga, New Zealand, plead guilty to six charges that are the result of botched botnet upgrade that lead to a denial of service attack on the University of Pennsylvania in 2007.

Walker plead guilty to two charges of accessing a computer for dishonest purpose, two charges of accessing computer systems without authorization, one of damaging or interfering with computer systems, and one of possessing software for committing crime. He could face five years in jail. However, according to reports from New Zealand Judge Arthur Tompkins is considering Walker’s age and cooperation with authorities and could recommend home detention or community service instead. Sentencing will take place on May 28.

Walker, who uses the online name of AKill, was arrested last November as part of the FBI’s Operation Botroast II, along with Ryan Brett Goldstein, 21, of Ambler, Pennsylvania. Walker and Goldstein allegedly caused a distributed denial-of service (DoS) attack on the University of Pennsylvania this past summer and cost the school nearly $13,000 to mitigate. Apparently the DoS attack was unintentional.

According to various reports, Walker said he was attempting to upgrade his botnet code when a glitch took down his network. A botnet consists of thousands of infected computers worldwide that can spew spam, assist in a denial-of-service attack on a target, or spread new versions of the originating worm. From a central point, called a Command and Control center, a botherder can send new code to those infected computers.

After the FBI identified AKill as Walker, they then worked with New Zealand authorities who uncovered a series of deposits in the Netherlands. Working with Dutch authorities, investigators pieces together that Walker’s botnet had earned an estimated $32,000 from adware vendors. Walker used the money to invest in his parent’s taxi cab company, and computer equipment.

Home-schooled, Walker, who also known online as “Snow Whyte” and “Snow Walker,” taught himself computer programming and encryption, and met up with other malware writers online. He may have first contacted Goldstein in an online chat room.