Post by oldweasel1 on Aug 30, 2003 8:19:16 GMT -5
It probably won't happen since they are going to try him in the Peope's Republic of Seattle. I hope he and his family get sued into bankrupcy!:
washingtonpost.com
Teenage Blaster Worm Suspect Arrested
Reuters
Friday, August 29, 2003; 1:20 PM
By Elinor Abreu
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - The FBI have arrested a Minnesota teenager suspected of making a copycat variant of the devastating Blaster Internet worm.
Jeffrey Lee Parson, 18, of Hopkins, Minnesota, a middle- class suburb west of Minneapolis, was arrested on one count of intentionally causing or attempting to cause damage to a computer, according to a St. Paul district court clerk.
Parson is scheduled to appear before a magistrate judge in St. Paul later on Friday. A 10-page complaint filed in the Western District of Washington state refers to a request to move Parson to Washington next week, the clerk said.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation in Seattle has scheduled a news conference together with the U.S. Secret Service and Microsoft Corp. in Seattle at 1:30 p.m. Pacific time (4:30 p.m. EDT) on Friday.
Anti-virus experts said the suspect is believed to be the creator of a variation of Blaster that circulated far and wide over the Internet, but ultimately infected fewer machines than the original. The creator of Blaster has not yet been found.
Authorities suspect he altered the self-replicating worm into the so-called B-variant, which like the original worm, bores into computers through a weak spot in Microsoft's Windows computer operating systems.
Dr. Peter Tippett, co-founder and chief technology officer of TruSecure/ICSA Labs, a kind of Centers for Disease Control for Internet security, said the variant of Blaster appeared to be an obvious "me-too" copy of the original malicious virus.
Tippett used the analogy of a graffiti writer discovering a bomb built by someone else, who then takes credit for it by writing "Hi Mom" on the side, before setting it off.
"It looks like we've arrested the kid who writes the "Hi Mom" version of the virus," Tippett said by analogy.
But while the teenager may not be the main culprit, Tippett and other security officials called for tough justice.
"This is not the main guy, at least it doesn't appear to be. But anybody who takes an existing virus and turns it into a nuisance, should be prosecuted," said Graham Cluley, senior technical consultant with anti-virus company Sophos Plc of Abingdon in the United Kingdom.
"It's still a serious crime. The more arrests there are, the more the message will be sent home to (virus writers) that (viruses) cause serious damage."
Blaster is a self-replicating Internet worm that takes over poorly defended computers and harnesses them to launch concerted data attacks via the Internet on a Microsoft technical service Web site. The two versions of the virus cause infected computers to close down and restart frequently.
One in three North American companies are estimated to have had at least some of their computers infected since Blaster emerged in early August, according to new data from Internet security laboratory ICSA.
During the month of August, North American companies with more than 100 employees suffered an estimated $1.3 billion in damage, not including wasted productivity, from fighting off the Blaster worm, Tippett estimated.
He estimated Blaster and other computer attacks this month are estimated to have caused $3.5 billion in damage to North American companies alone.
The estimates do not account for small businesses or the many consumers who have been hurt by Blaster, Sobig and other attacks that intermittently have slowed the Internet to a crawl. (Additional reporting by Eric Auchard in New York, Bernhard Warner in London, Deborah Charles in Washington, D.C. and Andy Stern in Chicago)
washingtonpost.com
Teenage Blaster Worm Suspect Arrested
Reuters
Friday, August 29, 2003; 1:20 PM
By Elinor Abreu
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - The FBI have arrested a Minnesota teenager suspected of making a copycat variant of the devastating Blaster Internet worm.
Jeffrey Lee Parson, 18, of Hopkins, Minnesota, a middle- class suburb west of Minneapolis, was arrested on one count of intentionally causing or attempting to cause damage to a computer, according to a St. Paul district court clerk.
Parson is scheduled to appear before a magistrate judge in St. Paul later on Friday. A 10-page complaint filed in the Western District of Washington state refers to a request to move Parson to Washington next week, the clerk said.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation in Seattle has scheduled a news conference together with the U.S. Secret Service and Microsoft Corp. in Seattle at 1:30 p.m. Pacific time (4:30 p.m. EDT) on Friday.
Anti-virus experts said the suspect is believed to be the creator of a variation of Blaster that circulated far and wide over the Internet, but ultimately infected fewer machines than the original. The creator of Blaster has not yet been found.
Authorities suspect he altered the self-replicating worm into the so-called B-variant, which like the original worm, bores into computers through a weak spot in Microsoft's Windows computer operating systems.
Dr. Peter Tippett, co-founder and chief technology officer of TruSecure/ICSA Labs, a kind of Centers for Disease Control for Internet security, said the variant of Blaster appeared to be an obvious "me-too" copy of the original malicious virus.
Tippett used the analogy of a graffiti writer discovering a bomb built by someone else, who then takes credit for it by writing "Hi Mom" on the side, before setting it off.
"It looks like we've arrested the kid who writes the "Hi Mom" version of the virus," Tippett said by analogy.
But while the teenager may not be the main culprit, Tippett and other security officials called for tough justice.
"This is not the main guy, at least it doesn't appear to be. But anybody who takes an existing virus and turns it into a nuisance, should be prosecuted," said Graham Cluley, senior technical consultant with anti-virus company Sophos Plc of Abingdon in the United Kingdom.
"It's still a serious crime. The more arrests there are, the more the message will be sent home to (virus writers) that (viruses) cause serious damage."
Blaster is a self-replicating Internet worm that takes over poorly defended computers and harnesses them to launch concerted data attacks via the Internet on a Microsoft technical service Web site. The two versions of the virus cause infected computers to close down and restart frequently.
One in three North American companies are estimated to have had at least some of their computers infected since Blaster emerged in early August, according to new data from Internet security laboratory ICSA.
During the month of August, North American companies with more than 100 employees suffered an estimated $1.3 billion in damage, not including wasted productivity, from fighting off the Blaster worm, Tippett estimated.
He estimated Blaster and other computer attacks this month are estimated to have caused $3.5 billion in damage to North American companies alone.
The estimates do not account for small businesses or the many consumers who have been hurt by Blaster, Sobig and other attacks that intermittently have slowed the Internet to a crawl. (Additional reporting by Eric Auchard in New York, Bernhard Warner in London, Deborah Charles in Washington, D.C. and Andy Stern in Chicago)