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Reuters
September 11, 2003, 15:30 BST
Two British men have been charged in connection with the TK worm, which caused ?5.5m of damage earlier this year
Police said on Wednesday that they had charged two British men, believed to be members of an international hacking ring, with using a computer program to assume control of unsuspecting computer users' machines.
Police said Jordan Bradley, 20, and Andrew Harvey, 22, were the authors of the TK computer worm, a so-called Trojan horse program that surfaced on the Internet sometime before February this year.
Like the wooden Trojan Horse of ancient Greek mythology which concealed enemy soldiers, their newer namesakes are malicious computer programs that are disguised as harmless information and can make their way onto a computer over the Internet.
Police estimate that TK caused $8.75m (?5.5m) worth of damage, infecting some 18,000 computers around the world. The program can take control of computers it infects.
Bradley and Harvey are due to appear at Consett Magistrates Court on18 September.
The two men are believed to be members of a group of computer hackers known as "Thre34t-Krew," hacker-speak for "Threat Crew," according to a statement from the United Kingdom's National Hi-Tech Crime Unit.
Recent advances in cyber law enforcement have helped authorities to track down hackers and virus writers, resulting in a string of arrests this year.
Earlier on Wednesday, Romanian authorities arrested 24-year-old Dan Dumitru Ciobanu for releasing onto the Internet a low-grade Net worm known as Blaster.F. He faces a prison sentence of up to 15 years if convicted.
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