SCI/TECH: Sasser/Netsky Creator Caught

ROTENBURG, Germany - A 18-year-old male arrested Friday, on suspicion of creating the Sasser worm that wreaked havoc on Mircosoft systems in recent weeks, has confessed. The worm causing serious computer outages world wide, is believed to be one of the costliest to the world economy ever. A patch was earlier released by Microsoft.

German authorities got a tip-off from Microsoft, that on its turn was tipped-off by a group of individuals from the suspects home state of Lower Saxony, tempted by a possible reward. Microsoft known to put bounties (up to $250,000) on the heads of notorious programmers, agreed to pay the reward if there is a conviction.

German law enforcement officers raided the man's house and found a computer containing the Sasser source code.
The suspect was later released because there was no indication to the police that he was a repeat offender.

He will probably be tried in a youth court as he just turned 18, on April 29, and was a minor when comitting the acts of "computer sabotage."

The investigation that led to the arrest was a joined effort of the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, German police and the Microsoft Corporation. Microsoft called it a "coordinated multinational law enforcement effort."

REUTERS

"Within 48 hours of the informants coming forward, our investigators and the German police were able to identify the perpetrator of the Sasser virus and to take him into custody," said Brad Smith, general counsel for Microsoft. "This individual is responsible, we believe, for all four variants of the Sasser virus."

"We are absolutely certain that this really is the creator of the Internet worm because Microsoft experts were involved in the inquiry and confirmed our suspicions and because the suspect admitted to it," said Frank Federau from Lower Saxony police.

Heiner Wilhelm from Lower Saxony police said the suspect was not aware of the extent of the damage he had caused. "He had become worried about the impact but he hadn't reckoned on our turning up," he told a news conference in Hanover.

Related Sources:
BBC
CNN
CNET
Slashdot
Internet Week - Sasser Worm Impacted Businesses Around the World
Internet Week - Symantec: Sasser, Netsky Work Of Same Hacker


[Edited on 9-5-2004 by Banshee]

It's interesting how the errant developer grew from a boy to a man in just a couple of paras before reverting to a youth. Big future for him no doubt.


Hoaks

Thanks for U2U! I think the alleged criminal would probably prefer "man" or "young man", but the terms don't actually affect the readability of the story at all, it just stood out for me.



[Edited on 8-5-2004 by MaskedAvatar]

yeah he will be a prize for some big company thats for shure

You might add that the Phatbot developer has been caught nearly the same time as well.

www.abovetopsecret.com...

which is quite a tremendous success for law-enforcement. And Phatbot had some serious impact

Honestly, I know some people are amazed by the fact that a kid can do things that a Trillion dollar company is supposed to keep closed. And yes, it's an achievement. However, I think these lowlife children need to be punished IF and WHEN they do these things for destructive purposes. If a kid finds a hole in MS Windows etc and notifies the company then fine, give him a donut maybe a job at some point, whatever. But if the kid insists on shipping this bug to thousands of people and crippling businesses I think he needs to be strung up, sent to jail and made an example of. Do you people understand that people lose their jobs because of this? How? Because it costs corporations Billions. Who feels that heat? Not the CEOs, the common employees. Who else? Well did you know Hospitals run Windows too?

This 18 year old German kid (thank goodness he's old enough to be tried as an adult) should be made responsible for reparations to the people his "fun" hurt. I think the lowlifes might think twice about spreading another fun virus in the future after that. You cost companies money that caused say... 40 people to lose their jobs... any money you make in the future goes to them. Suddenly there will be less viruses.

I wholeheartly agree with you. It's a shame that those virii coders don't think about the real impact of their actions. They just see what's in the news and think it's cool.

If the popular email worm writers get arrested I will sue their asses to pay the support hours I had to spent because some employees actually catched those worms.
(which is, in some cases, hard to avoid).

I think he should be sentenced to five years in an Iraqi jail! That'll fix him.

Put this cretin in jail with the regular population where he will get to play with some real viruses.

The cost in support and loss of productivity these things cause is unreal and those little punks should suffer for it since they obviously will never be able to provide financial restitution.