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| Gabriele Canazza is suspected of having written
the Vierika worm. |
Italian police have arrested a 30-year-old man suspected of
writing the VBS/Vierika-A
mass-mailing worm.
Gabriele Canazza, who lives in Bologna area, is believed to be
the first suspected virus writer arrested in Italy. According to
the Guardia di Finanzia di Milano, the Italian financial police, he
is believed to be the same man who used the pseudonym "Krivoj Rog"
when the Vierika email-aware worm was released earlier this
year.
The Italian authorities have closed down what they believe to be
the virus writer's website, and said in a statement that they
believed it was possible that 1500 computers had been infected in
the first 24 hours the worm spread.
Canazza is said to have a Ukranian female friend called Vierika,
whose picture was published on his website.
"A strong message needs to be sent out to all in the
virus-writing underground that what they are doing is
irresponsible, and if their viruses infect innocent people's
computers that they will be punished," said Graham Cluley, senior
technology consultant for Sophos. "All computer users should ensure
their anti-virus defences are kept up-to-date."
Sophos recommends companies protect their email with a consolidated solution to thwart the virus and spam
threats and secure their desktops and servers with automatically
updated anti-virus protection.
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 security and data protection solutions that are simple to manage, deploy and use and that deliver the industry's lowest total cost of ownership. Sophos offers award-winning encryption, endpoint security, web, email, and network access control solutions backed by SophosLabs - a global network of threat intelligence centers. With more than two decades of experience, Sophos is regarded as a leader in security and data protection by top analyst firms and has received many industry awards.
Sophos is headquartered in Boston, US and Oxford, UK. More information is available at www.sophos.com.