Scottish man Matthew Anderson,  has pleaded guilty in court to creating viruses during an online hacking spree he carried out with a number of other people located in Finland.

The E-Crime arm of the British police found that the 33 year old from Aberdeenshire carried out the operation by composing emails with attached Trojan horse software and distributed them in a spam like fashion. If a user opened the emails they unwittingly enabled the group who had called themselves m00p complete access to their PC’s. The gang were reported to have targeted hundreds of UK businesses between 2005 and 2006. and had also infected tens of thousands of computers around the world.

“This organised online criminal network infected huge numbers of computers around the world, especially targeting UK businesses and individuals,” said detective constable Bob Burls, from the Police Central e-Crime Unit. “Matthew Anderson methodically exploited computer users not only for his own financial gain but also violating their privacy.”

It is believed that Anderson also activated users webcams to spy on them from time to time.