CANBERRA, Aug. 13 (Xinhua) -- An Australian man was charged on Thursday with infecting 3,000 computers worldwide with viruses designed to capture banking details.

    The 20-year-old man was arrested after a three-month investigation by electronic crime sections of South Australian Police and the Australian Federal Police.

    "It will be alleged that the arrested man unlawfully compromised over 3,000 computers throughout Australia and worldwide by infecting those computers with malicious software," South Australian Police said in a statement.

    The software was designed to "capture banking credentials and credit card information from compromised machines", the statement noted.

    "Additionally, it is suspected that this offender had developed capabilities to launch distributed denial of service attacks with up to 74,000 worldwide."

    The man has been charged with offenses including unauthorized modification of computer data, supply and possession of a computer virus with intent to commit a serious computer offense, unlawful operation of a computer system and theft.