Australian charged with infecting 3,000 computers

An Australian man has been charged with infecting computers with a virus to capture banking data.

A 20-year-old Australian man has been charged with infecting more than 3,000 computers around the world with a virus designed to capture banking and credit card data,police said Thursday.

The man,whose name will not be released until he appears in an Adelaide court on September 4,has been charged with several computer offenses that carry prison terms of up to 10 years,South Australia state police Detective Supt. Jim Jeffery said in a statement.

Police also uncovered information that will identify other offenders,Jeffery said.

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The man,who lives in the state capital,Adelaide,is also accused of illegally creating a capacity to disable computer systems by bombarding them with unwanted traffic from up to 74,000 computers he controlled around the world. This type of sabotage is known as a distributed denial of service attack.

Police have not said whether the man allegedly used stolen banking information to commit identity fraud.

The arrest followed a three-month investigation involving state and federal computer crime detectives.