A TEENAGER has been charged with creating a computer virus which “crashed hundreds of financial institutions” across the world.

Although he did not appear at Newtownards Magistrates Court on Thursday, Josh Maunder (18) was charged with 21 offences including 13 charges of doing an unauthorised act impairing the operation of a computer, two counts each of making an article intended it to be used for computer misuse, obtaining an article to commit an offence and possessing articles in connection with fraud.

Maunder, from Abbey Park in Bangor, also faces single counts of supplying an article to be used in computer misuse and conspiring to commit an unauthorised act with all of the offences alleged to have been committed between December 1 2017 and September 13 2018.

None of the facts surrounding the allegations were opened in court but revealing that he had applied for a certificate of exceptionality from Legal Aid, defence counsel Conor Holmes told the court the Crown case is that Maunder “created a computer virus, sends it across the world and crashes hundreds of financial institutions".

It is alleged that when Maunder was 14 and 15-years-old, he made a “distributed denial of service attack” which he sent to multiple websites and servers including the Nationwide Building Society, Nuclear Fall Out servers, Police.UK, Policie.CZ (police force in the Czech Republic) and the server hosting a boxing match between rapper KSI and YouTube star Logan Paul.

He is also accused of having a computer program intending to use it to commit an offence and with having articles for fraud including email addresses and passwords relating to PayPal accounts in the UK, US, Germany and China.

District Judge Mark Hamill adjourned the case to August 18.