Two UK men were sentenced today at Newcastle Crown Court for their part in an international hacking group.

They were charged for writing the "TK Worm" in 2003. This was one of the early botnet clients.

TK Worm is detected by our antivirus as Backdoor.IRC.Demfire. The name comes from "Fire Daemon", which is the name of the service started by the virus.

Andrew Harvey (23) from Durham pleaded guilty to conspiring to "effect unauthorised modifications to the contents of computers with the intent to impair the operation of those computers" and was sentenced to six months.

Jordan Bradley (22) from Darlington pleaded guilty to the same and was sentenced to three months.