Suspected Sasser creator arrested in Germany

Suspected 'Sasser' creator arrested in Germany

Worm infected thousands of computers worldwideThe Associated Press
Updated: 5:43 a.m. ET May 08, 2004BERLIN - German authorities have arrested an 18-year-old man suspected of creating the "Sasser" computer worm, which infected thousands of computers worldwide, an official said Saturday.

The suspect, a high school student, was arrested Friday, said Frank Federau, a spokesman for the state criminal office in Hanover.

Police and prosecutors on Friday searched his parents' house in the northern town of Waffensen, Federau said. He did not release the man's identity, and said he did not immediately have details of how the suspect was tracked down.

Prosecutors handling the case could not immediately be reached for comment Saturday. German newsweekly Der Spiegel reported, without citing sources, that the CIA and FBI also were involved in the hunt for the worm's creator, whom it identified as Sven J.

The worm raced around the world over the past week, exploiting a flaw in Microsoft Corp.'s Windows operating system.

Unlike most outbreaks, Sasser does not require users to activate it by clicking on an e-mail attachment. Sasser is known as a network worm because it can automatically scan the Internet for computers with the security flaw and send a copy of itself there.

entire article here: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4928653/

Haha,

My windows comp got wiped yesterday because of that, I couldn't do nething but reboot my whole machine to fix it. Tried to do everything and if I tried something like System restore it would say, "System Restore cannot save you computer, action terminated." Was crazy!

//I even went into DOS and tried to quarantine it, but that didn't work

High school student, you say? Why am I not surprised...

I second that

hmmmm, does a script kiddie really have any talent?

However these virus authors are getting really quick of exploiting the latest microsoft hole.

Well, XP's been out for how long? 3 years? I wouldn't say that's too quick

what I mean is that once a security hole is announced, it will take a few days for a virus to be authored exploiting that whole. I think they reverse engineer the patch.

When blaster came out, correct me if I am wrong, but I think it took almost a year for someone to come up with a virus that exploited whatever hole that virus did

looks like it exploits the whole hole

lol! sorry about that, my english is off late at night

lol, It amazes me why a lot of kids enjoy tearing apart computers instead of fixing them. Its not that hard to destroy a computer (Ive done it plenty of times... ) but figuring out problems and fixing them in a system is a much better use of your time.

some people enjoy creating chaos, sometimes it can be more fun. If you can create a worm like that he probably already can fix most things

Nothing better to do with their lives?

It usually tends to be teens that do this kind of BS to either feel better about themselves, or make themself feel like they have some control on the computer, which they cannot gain in reality.

I second all opinins. I have friend who gets commisioned by companies to find holes in thier software. Sometimes he just tries and crackes company firewalls then charges the company before he will tell them how he did it. I think thats a little bit of extortion but at least he isnt destroying things with his talent. Why other people do Ill never know.

lol, I actually have a retired uncle who worked for the government doing that sort of stuff. He was insane. He tore my computer apart in about 20 minutes, then put it back together in 5.
Now theres a guy with talent!