The identity of the teenager arrested on charges related to a
variant of the
Blaster internet worm has been revealed.
Jeffrey Lee Parson, 18, was arrested on Friday 29 August and
made a court appearance in St. Paul, Minnesota. Parson appeared in
court wearing a faded t-shirt bearing the words "Big Daddy", as
well as cargo shorts and sneakers. Judge Susan Nelson ordered
Parson to be held under house arrest, although government lawyers
had argued that Parson should be kept in jail, based on the
"grievous and substantial" harm he was said to have caused other
computer users.
Parson's arrest follows a search of his home at Hopkins,
Minnesota, by FBI and Secret Service agents on Tuesday, where seven
computers were seized.
It is claimed that Parson, who is believed to use the online
handle "teekid" or "t33kid", admitted to FBI Special Agent Eric
Smithmier that he modified the original Blaster worm and created
the W32/Blaster-B
variant.
Parson, reportedly a physically imposing figure, at
6-foot-4-inches tall and weighing 320 pounds, is said to have run a
website where viruses were made available for download alongside
lyrics for songs by Judas Priest, Megadeth and Weird Al
Yankovic.
"The crime-fighting authorities have moved quickly in this case
- sending a strong message that law enforcement agencies around the
world are getting better at catching cyber-criminals," said Graham
Cluley, senior technology consultant for Sophos Anti-Virus. "It is
to be hoped that other budding virus writers think twice before
unleashing their worms on innocent computer users."
W32/Blaster-B
is functionally equivalent to its predecessor, W32/Blaster-A, but
creates a file called teekids.exe rather than msblast.exe in the
Windows system folder. It also creates a different registry entry
and includes some offensive text (which does not get displayed)
directed towards Microsoft, Bill Gates, and the anti-virus
industry.
In January 2003, British virus writer, Simon Vallor, was
sentenced to two
years in jail for distributing a number of viruses he had
written.
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