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Global Computer Worm Hackers Caught

Two computer hackers from Britain have been sentenced to jail after they tried to create their own secured Internet chatroom. Around the world, thousands of computers felt the impact of this successful experiment including some at the U.S. Defense Department. Jordan Bradley, 22, and Andrew Harvey, 24, were two of the three partners who made up the transatlantic hacking group known as `TH34t Krew` which created the `trojan` `TK Worm` which surfaced onto the Internet in 2002 and 2003.

The judge told the pair that their sentence would serve as a public warning. Harvey, an electrician, was sentenced to six months in jail. Bradley, who is unemployed, will spend three months behind bars. In a separate trial held in the US in June, Raymond Steigerwalt, 21 from Indiana was jailed for 21 months and ordered to pay the Defense Department $15,800 in restitution costs for his role in the plot.

Named after the wooded Trojan horse of Greek mythology that concealed enemy soldiers, `Trojans` are destructive computer programs that are disguised as harmless information and can make their way on to a computer over the Internet. The worm allowed hackers to use free space and bandwidth from other computers for their own purposes. It caused no great damage, but it could have led to widespread disruption.