Aaron Caffrey, 19, is alleged to have set up the group called Allied Haxor Elite.

Mr Caffrey, who is accused of crashing systems at the port of Houston in Texas, admitted being part of the group but denied he had ever illegally hacked in to a computer.

The teenager, from Shaftesbury in Dorset, told Southwark Crown Court that hackers operated legally, but that people who entered computer systems illegally were known as "crackers".

Prosecutor Paul Addison asked Mr Caffrey, who suffers from a form of autism called Asperger's Syndrome, if he had seen the film Hackers.

I have hacked into computers legally for friends to test their server security because they asked me to but never illegally.

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