News

From their homes in small towns such as Notre-Dame-du-Portage or Jonquières, a handful of young Quebec hackers took control of tens of thousands of computers in countries from Poland to Brazil, police allege.

In what the Quebec provincial police say is a first in Canada, they have cracked an alleged ring of 17 hackers, saying it inflicted $45-million in damage in 100 different countries.

The scope of the ring's actions was "500 times more powerful than Mafiaboy," said police Captain Frédérick Gaudreau, alluding to the infamous Montreal hacker who disrupted Amazon, eBay and CNN websites.

Police were reluctant to reveal details, but said the accused planted hidden software called computer worms or Trojan horses on personal, corporate and governmental computers.

The hidden software created so-called botnets, allowing the suspects to control tens of thousands of computers without the knowledge of their legitimate users.

The affected computers were co-opted for data and identity theft, theft of wireless communications and the circulation of spam e-mails and "phishing," the phony corporate-like websites or e-mails used to induce people to give their banking information.

The accused used the data or sold it to others, Capt. Gaudreau told reporters. But he said there was no indication of links to traditional organized-crime groups.

During a news conference, Capt. Gaudreau said at one point, nearly a million computers worldwide were affected. But numbers released by the provincial police listed fewer than 150,000 computers.

The tally made public yesterday showed that more than 39,000 computers were infected in Poland, 28,458 in Brazil, 26,169 in Mexico. In Canada, 3,383 computers were hit.

The $45-million damage estimate is based on the repair costs to computer servers and does not include any fraud police might uncover while examining the dozens of computers it seized at the suspects' homes.

The investigation began in the summer of 2006 after complaints began surging from corporate and government computer users, said Capt. Gaudreau, the head of the computer-crime squad. He did not elaborate on the nature of the complaints.

The 17 suspects - 16 men and one woman - range in age from 17 to 26.

They are charged with illegally obtaining computer services, hacking computer data and illegal possession of computer passwords. The cases will be handled by Crown attorneys from the provincial anti-organized-crime prosecution unit, police said.

They allege the suspects used "sophisticated technology" in their hacking.

The allegations highlighted the changes in computer hacking since Mafiaboy made world headlines in 2000.

A high school student, Mafia unleashed so-called denial-of-service attacks, jamming computers in 54 locations around the world by overloading them with bogus requests. U.S. officials initially claimed that he caused $1.7-billion (U.S.) in damage, but the RCMP and the Crown later said the real figure was in the millions of dollars.

The arrests in Quebec, said Cpt. Gaudreau, are a reminder to computer users. "Keep your anti-virus and firewall software up to date."