N.Z., FBI grill alleged botnet attacker

WELLINGTON, New Zealand, Nov. 30 (UPI) -- New Zealand police and the FBI questioned the 18-year-old alleged leader of an international cyber-crime operation affecting computers in the United States.

The man referred to by his cyber-handle "Akill" is suspected of heading an international cyber-crime group called A-Team that uses malware to hijack third-party computers, the New Zealand Herald reported Friday.

"Akill" allegedly directed a distributed denial of service attack that used third-party computers to overload and subsequently crash network servers at a university in Philadelphia.

The investigation is part of the second-phase of an FBI operation targeting "botnets" and their programmers, called "botherders."

A botnet targets third-party computers by exploiting background processing power to launch cyber attacks undetected.

FBI Director Robert S. Mueller, III said that botnets are the "weapon of choice of cyber criminals."