18-year-old Josh Maunder from Abbey Park, County Down, Northern Ireland, pled not guilty to each of the 21 allegations against him.
Today, a youngster denied inventing a computer virus that purportedly “crashed hundreds of financial institutions” throughout the globe when he was just 14 years old.
Josh Maunder, now 18 years old and a resident of Abbey Park in Bangor, County Down, Northern Ireland, pleaded not guilty to all 21 accusations against him.
The kid is charged with 13 counts of doing an unauthorized conduct that hindered the operation of a computer, as well as two counts each of creating an article with the intent to use it for computer misuse, getting an article to commit an offense, and possessing materials related to fraud.
All alleged offenses occurred between 1 December 2017 and 13 September 2018.
Today before Downpatrick Crown Court, no evidence relating to the charges was presented.
However, Maunder ‘built a computer virus, disseminated it around the world, and crashed hundreds of financial institutions,’ according to the Crown’s evidence, as previously disclosed by the defense attorney Conor Holmes.
Maunder is accused of disabling the server hosting the November 2019 boxing bout between rapper KSI and YouTube celebrity Logan Paul in Los Angeles, California.
Nationwide Building Society was one of the financial firms whose services were compromised by the purported virus attack.
According to the details of the alleged crimes, while Maunder was 14 and 15 years old, he launched a “Distributed Denial of Service attack” on various websites and servers.
Among the suspected targets were Nationwide Building Society, Nuclear Fall Out servers, Police.UK, Policie.CZ (the Czech Republic’s police force), and the server hosting the boxing match between rapper KSI and YouTube celebrity Logan Paul.
Maunder is also charged with possessing a computer program with the intent to commit a crime and with possessing articles for fraud, including email addresses and passwords for PayPal accounts in the United Kingdom, the United States, Germany, and China on one count, and ‘credit card details contained in a file’ on another.
After the arraignment, Mr. Holmes and prosecuting attorney David McNeill informed the court that continued discussions and consultations are occurring as the legal teams prepare for trial. After releasing Maunder on bond, Judge Philip Gilpin delayed the case to November 10.