Herald on Sunday

KIWI-OZ FACE OFF

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- Kirsty Johnston

A teenage victim at the centre of one of New Zealand’s most aggressive cyber attacks will fly to Denmark to give evidence against the man who allegedly tried to exploit her.

The man’s trial comes more than three years after he allegedly hacked computers at the girl’s Auckland home, her school and her father’s business in revenge for a failed online relationsh­ip.

He was arrested in September 2015, and charged with 12 crimes, including sexual harassment, hacking and child pornograph­y.

The case came to light after students at Long Bay College in Auckland complained about a denial-of-service attack on the school’s IT system. Experts and police were called in to help.

Authoritie­s later revealed the girl’s relationsh­ip with the man began through online gaming when she was 15. It allegedly progressed to sharing explicit images, and then Skype calls where the girl undressed in front of a camera. When she wouldn’t provide more images, he is alleged to have attempted to blackmail her by threatenin­g to post the images to the web.

When that failed, it is claimed the man hacked her family’s home computers and then launched a denial-of-service attack on the school’s servers, rendering them useless.

He also allegedly uploaded explicit images and videos of the girl to pornograph­y websites and bombarded the school’s Facebook page with links to the sites.

The school held assemblies about the dangers of sharing images online, and letters were sent to parents to explain the situation.

Police said at the time it was one of the most aggressive attacks they had seen.

The girl and her mother will travel to Denmark to give evidence at the trial next week.

The 27-year-old man is unlikely to go to prison as he has been diagnosed with a personalit­y disorder.

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