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27 Feb 2001

Swiss man imprisoned after distributing virus CD ROM

German newspapers have reported that the Swiss Supreme Court has sentenced a man to two months in prison after he was found guilty of distributing a CD-ROM containing viruses.

The 30 year old man had earlier been fined 300 Swiss Francs by the Court of Zurich. On February 22 2001 the Swiss Supreme Court confirmed the Zurich court's ruling, increasing the fine to 5000 Swiss Francs and imposing an additional sentence of two months imprisonment.

It is understood the CD-ROM contained instructions and source code for writing viruses.

"Why on earth is a 30 year old grown man distributing CDs containing virus-writing instructions?", said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for Sophos Anti-Virus. "Maybe it's time those people who write and distribute viruses took a long hard look at themselves and grew up. Sentences such as these prove that the authorities are prepared to take action against those who distribute malicious code."


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More than 100 million users in 150 countries rely on Sophos as the best protection against complex threats and data loss. Sophos is committed to providing complete security solutions that are simple to deploy, manage, and use and that deliver the industry's lowest total cost of ownership. Sophos offers award-winning encryption, endpoint security, web, email, mobile and network security solutions backed by SophosLabs - a global network of threat intelligence centers.

Sophos is headquartered in Boston, US and Oxford, UK. More information is available at www.sophos.com.