Sven Jaschan, an engineering student from Waffensen, North Germany, could face a sentence of up to five years in prison if found guilty.
He is accused of writing the Sasser worm, which is designed to attack a known vulnerability in the Windows operating system. Unusually, the worm spreads by means of the internet, and does not rely on a user opening an attachment in an e-mail – rather, the worm infects an unprotected machine simply by its connection to the internet.
Once infected the PC may continually crash and reboot, while the worm uses the machine as a base from which to infect other PCs.
The worm hit thousands of computers in May this year and followed infections by Jaschan's other alleged creation, the Netsky worm.
According to anti-virus firm Saphos, the two worms, together with their variants, accounted for 70% of all virus activity seen by the firm in the first half of this year.
"For a single German teenager to have such an impact on computer security is simply staggering," Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for Sophos, said in July. "If one of Jaschan's friends had not informed Microsoft about his identity then the situation may have been even worse."
German authorities were able to arrest Jaschan within seven days of Sasser's launch in early May, following cooperation among German law enforcement agencies, the FBI and Secret Service in the US, and Microsoft.
Informants came forward in the hope of securing a $250,000 reward offered by Microsoft as part of its $5 million anti-virus reward program.
While investigations into some of Jaschan's friends continue, German prosecutors have now charged the teenager with computer sabotage to the tune of $157,000, although prosecutors believe that many victims have not come forward and that the real cost of the worm is in the millions.
According to Sophos, if Jaschan, who was 17 at the time of the offence, is tried in adult rather than juvenile court, he may face a sentence of up to five years in prison.