Sasser creator arrested
p2pnet.net News:- An 18-year-old high school student says he created the Sasser e-worm that’s been spreading alarm and despondency around the Net for the past eight days.
“Police in Lower Saxony state arrested the youth Friday after a search of his parents’ home,” says a VOA story here.
British anti-virus company Sophos says the Skynet virus-writing gang – responsible for the Netsky worms which have infecting computer users for most of this year – might also have been distributing Sasser.
“All these worms have been highly disruptive and complex, suggesting that the author isn’t working alone,” says Sophos senior technology consultant Graham Cluley.
“Seizing this man’s computers could provide the vital clues that will bring down the infamous ‘Skynet’ virus-writing gang.”
The Skynet gang probably takes its name from the computer system that takes over the world in Terminator III.
The author’s downfall was a direct result of Microsoft’s $5 million anti-Virus bounty.
Mounted to produce leads on virus attacks, it snagged its first success with the arrest of Sasser’s creator, Microsoft is quoted as saying in a CNET story here.
“In what the company called a ‘coordinated multinational law enforcement effort, information provided to Microsoft by informants led local authorities to arrest the 18-year-old unnamed resident of Rotenburg, Germany, only a week after the original Sasser virus had been released,” it states.
German authorities, “painted a picture of a highly intelligent teenager, described by friends as shy, who was part of a circle of computer science students passionately involved in software programming,” says a story in Australia’s The Age here.
“The students encouraged him to push his early virus-writing efforts further.”
UPDATED: 12:25 pm Pacific, May 9, 2004
May 8th, 2004 at 2:35 pm
I wouldn’t believe a word Graham Cluely said. He’s nothing but a glory hog.
May 9th, 2004 at 4:23 am
Glory? Can their be glory in an act that is spindless and a pathetic attempt to gain power?
September 8th, 2004 at 11:09 pm
omg teh leet skyNET