 |
| Spanish police announced the arrest at a news
conference |
Spanish police have announced that they have arrested a
suspected virus author, the first believed to have ever been
apprehended in Spain.
According to the Civil Guard investigation the 23-year-old man
arrested in Madrid is believed to be responsible for the W32/Raleka worm which,
according to a police spokesman, infected more than 120,000 users
in 14 days earlier this year.
The authorities followed leads which directed them to
investigate a Spanish hacking and phone phreaking gang named
"AKELARRE". This line of inquiry lead the authorities to
investigate a number of properties and individuals. Three houses
were searched, eight computers confiscated and a 23-year-old man
nicknamed "900K" has been arrested. "900K" is believed to be the
leader of the hacking gang, whose other members go by names such as
"DOING", "SANITY", "DEBYSS" and "DARKEAGLE".
The Raleka worm operated in a similar manner to the prevalent
Blaster worm,
exploiting a critical security vulnerability in many versions of
Microsoft's Windows operating system. Once infected computers had
been compromised they could be controlled by a remote hacker.
"Viruses are not harmless pranks; they cause real harm
disrupting business and personal communications as well as
destroying and stealing sensitive data. The Raleka worm was no
different, indiscriminately infecting innocent computer users,"
said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for Sophos.
"Computer crime authorities around the world are better equipped
than ever at hunting down the perpetrators of hacking and virus
crimes. Virus writers should be asking themselves whether it's
really worth taking the risk."
In January 2003, a British virus writer was sentenced to two years in
jail for distributing a number of viruses he had written. Recently
Microsoft announced a $500,000
bounty for information leading to the successful conviction of the
authors of the Blaster and Sobig worms. Although Raleka used a
similar trick as Blaster, it is not believed the arrest is
connected to Microsoft's reward.
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.