Iria

Dutch police have arrested three individuals suspected of hacking into more than 100,000 computers worldwide and using the hijacked systems in online crimes.

The three individuals, whose names were not disclosed, allegedly commandeered the computers using malicious code known as a Trojan horse, Dutch prosecutors said in a statement Friday. The investigation is ongoing and more arrests are expected, prosecutors said.

The main suspect is a 19-year-old male; the other two suspects are 22 and 27. Police confiscated computers, documents, cash and a sports car in searches of the suspects' residences. Investigators also took control of a bank account, prosecutors said.

The Trojan horse, called W32.Toxbot, was first spotted early this year. It was surreptitiously installed on computers and let the attackers remotely control infected systems and steal confidential information by logging keyboard entries, prosecutors said.

Antivirus software does detect the Trojan, but the suspects, in a race with the antivirus software makers, kept tweaking their malicious code to hide it, prosecutors said.

Investigators accuse the suspects of hacking into computers, destroying computer networks and installing adware and spyware. The suspects are also thought to have sold their services to others, writing viruses that were designed to steal login data for online banking, prosecutors said.
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