WELLINGTON (Reuters) - New Zealand police are questioning a man alleged to be the leader of a cyber crime network that infiltrated computers worldwide and brought down the system at a U.S. university.

Investigators in New Zealand, the United States and the Netherlands believe the 18-year-old wrote software used to attack over a million computers, causing damage of around NZ$25 million ($19 million), New Zealand Press Association said.

The software was allegedly used in bringing down the computer server at the University of Pennsylvania last year, New Zealand police said in a statement.

The man was the ringleader of a botnet, a network of computers infiltrated by a program that surreptitiously installs itself to allow a hacker to control it, they said.

(Reporting by Kazunori Takada)
© Copyright 2007 Reuters.