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| Sophos customers are protected against the Agobot
worm |
Police who arrested a 21-year-old man in Germany in connection
with a malicious computer program called Agobot feared that the
suspect might flee the country.
Ullrich Heffner, a police spokesman in the southwestern state of
Baden-Württemberg, told the media that the man had been held
following his arrest because of fears that he might leave the
country. The man, who has been named only as "Axel G" in local
reports, has now been released from custody today but was required
to surrender his identity papers and must report regularly to
police.
Police in Germany arrested
the man on Friday 7 May and charged him under the country's
computer crime laws for attacks on computers in the UK, USA and
Germany linked to the Agobot worm (also known as Phatbot). Five
other men were also charged, but were not taken into custody.
Information supplied in recent weeks by the FBI are believed to
have lead to the German police searching the suspect's house and
the seizure of computers.
Email messages from the suspect examined by the authorities
indicated that he planned to leave Germany to avoid military
service - prompting the police to keep him behind bars for the last
week.
"The German police appear to be making significant progress in
fighting computer crime - arresting suspects across the country in
connection with both the Agobot and Sasser
outbreaks," said Graham Cluley, senior
technology consultant for Sophos. "All those members of the
computer underground involved in writing Trojan horses, viruses and
worms should think very hard about the consequences if they are
caught."
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.