Whizz kid cleared of US computer attack

A computer whizz kid branded a cyber-criminal after his PC was hijacked to cause America's biggest systems crash has been cleared of any wrongdoing.

Aaron Caffrey, 19, was not only charged but forced to endure a two-week trial for allegedly shutting down vital navigation systems at the port of Houston in Texas.

He even had to endure transcripts of steamy transatlantic exchanges between him and the woman he loved being read out to a court full of strangers.

London's Southwark Crown Court was told he launched the potentially catastrophic electronic assault in a revenge bid against a female Internet chatroom user who had insulted his girlfriend Jessica.

But the Crown alleged that in trying to sabotage her PC, he unintentionally crashed Houston's navigational network by bombarding it with thousands of electronic messages.

But the jury of five men and six women accepted Caffrey's claim that it was not him but unknown computer users who had hacked into his PC and loaded it with the "attack script".

This was automatically activated once he opened a particular file.

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