Suspected 'Sasser' creator arrested in Germany

BERLIN - German authorities have arrested an 18-year-old man suspected of creating the "Sasser" computer virus, which infected thousands of computers worldwide, an official said Saturday.

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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.

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.


http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4928653/

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 Spiegel actually says that FBI and CIA were looking Russia, while Microsoft experts helped finding the author in Germany :shrug: . The source for that seems to be the police press release.


Well, there will be a press conference 17h MEST (11AM ET).

bastard! I was stupid and hadn't put the latest MS updates on my wife's laptop. She went out of town on business last week and, BAM!, she got it immediately at the hotel.. She wasn't behind a firewall like she wass here. Of course, I have to clean it off.

In the southern state of Baden-Württemberg a 21 year-old was arrested. He is suspected of programming the Phatbot trojan.

Apartments in Lower Saxony, Hamburg and Bavaria were searched, but no further arrests were made.



No English link yet.

The virus authors almost never start up the virus attacks any more. They post the completed viruses on websites, and then the script kiddies trying to look like big bad hAxx0Rs they don't have the talent to be download them and infest the net with them

off to Abu Ghraib. Hate these virus people.

shop yesterday, one of the techs there told me that he had to clean up some 50 computers that had been infected with Sasser.

eom

for some reason unknown to me, get off on trying to destroy other peoples computers. If he isn't the author, then I'm sure he can provide info on where he got the original program. But I doubt if that will help, the guys probably long gone and was routing through servers that keep their users identities 'anonymous'.

Someone with computer savvy please explain to me how that works. Why do, or would, some IP providers allow their users to remain unknown? I mean, shouldn't that tell them something? And how does that work? How can they not be traced back?

I've always been very curious about this.

The teen in this case obviously didn't. European legislation is different from the American, so while the Music Industry won't get any IPs from the ISPs easily, the police will.

There are a few anonymous surfing projects -

http://anon.inf.tu-dresden.de/

That any of you would be interested in a trial first. You know, just to make sure that he's guilty.

I mean, I know that it is impossible to fathom that a person could be set up to take a fall for a crime in our freedom loving society but a trial would, at least, quiet those pesky libruls.

But you are of course right - he is not convicted yet.

are full of innocent people who "confessed".

The point about a fair trial is essential. If he is guilty, I wish he would get a long time in prison.