According to media reports, a 21-year-old German man was
arrested and charged under the country's computer sabotage law for
creating malicious computer code. Admitting responsibility for
creating the Agobot Trojan, the
suspect was apprehended in the southern town of Waldshut on Friday
7 May.
The suspect's computer hardware and software were also
confiscated and will be closely examined by the authorities. Five
other Germans were also charged in connection with the distribution
of these Trojan programs.
"The Agobot family of Trojans is huge, with variants allowing
unauthorised and remote access to a infected computer," said Carole
Theriault, security consultant at Sophos. "The first version of
this Trojan is almost 20 months old, and we hope that with these
arrests, we'll be seeing the last of them."
"However, it is difficult to confirm at this time whether this
suspect is the author of all the Agobot variants. The code was
reportedly available online, and in that case, anybody could have
downloaded it, tweaked it and distributed a version of it,"
explained Theriault.
German authorities told reporters that there was no link between
this arrest and the arrest of Sven Jaschan,
the 18-year-old German from Rotenburg in northern Germany, who was
charged late last week in connection with the Sasser worm.
Sophos is headquartered in Boston, US and Oxford, UK. More information is available at www.sophos.com.