LONDON: Two British hackers were jailed on Friday for helping to spread a computer worm which affected thousands of machines around the world, including some at the US Department of Defence.

Jordan Bradley, 22, and Andrew Harvey, 23, were part of an international hacking group called “TH34t Krew” which created the “TK worm”, a so-called “Trojan” programme that surfaced on the Internet sometime before February 2003.

Likened to the wooden Trojan Horse of Greek mythology which concealed enemy soldiers, “Trojans” are malicious computer programmes that are disguised as harmless information and can make their way on to a computer over the Internet.

Officers from Britain’s National Hi-Tech Crime Unit (NHTCU) estimated the TK worm caused millions of pounds worth of damage, infecting 18,000 computers around the world.—Reuters