The arrest of the youth in Brisbane follows the filing of a complaint by the as yet unnamed ISP on the 23rd of October. A statement issued by the Australian High Tech Crime centre says the investigation took less than 24 hours to resolve. The youth will face court on two counts of unauthorised access to computer systems using the telecommunications network under provision in the Criminal Code Act 1995. It is also alleged the youth gained unauthorised access to a university network in the United Kingdom.
AHTCC director, federal agent Alastair MacGibbon, said the arrest should serve as a warning to others. "We hope this serves as a warning to others who may be contemplating this type of criminal activity," he said in a statement. "We regard computer hacking as a very serious issue and will continue working closely with Australian and international agencies to ensure the people who commit crimes of this nature face the full consequences of the law."
It is hoped the swift arrest of the alleged offender will encourage other ISPs to come forward "quickly should they detect any unauthorised use of their systems," MacGibbon added.
The arrest is the first of its kind under the Criminal Code Act.
Although the exact details of the alleged offences have not yet been made public, MacGibbon said the offences were serious. "The [illegal] hacking incidents in this particular case were serious. Once the ISP involved realised a breach had occurred, they contacted us quickly and were very cooperative with providing information," he said.
I recently had the sad experience of having my IP address banned, after someone highjacked it and used it to mask the sending of 3gig of data over a week end - when my usual usage in a month is less that 250k.
iinet, my ISP, couldn't have cared less!! In the end, they simply threatened that if I didn't pay for the broadband usage on my ADSL line, they would pull my plug. They had absolutely no interest in trying to find out who (or how) my IP address was be used at iinet.
We do not run an open relay; I spent a week following up various ISP's who were blocking my IP address when I was using it in my legitimate business - and finding I was 'banned'. There are still one or two local addresses that will not accept mail from our IP, even when we 'reply to sender'.
Maybe if iinet had a little more interest in protecting their legitimate customers, fewer of us would have to put up with this additional expense; loss of productive working time; loss of contact with customers; reduction in stress related to being accused of stupidity (spamming!) when running an electronically based business that cannot afford to spam!
I am still a very angry, unhappy, iinet user, in my business, because I am the victim here!
Cheers
Lesley