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| Police have questioned five people and raided
houses close to the village where Sven Jaschan, who was arrested last week,
lives |
Is more than one person responsible for the Netsky and Sasser
worms?
Police in Germany have questioned an additional five people in
connection with the creation and public unleashing of the Sasser
and Netsky worms.
Last weekend 18-year-old Sven Jaschan was arrested in Waffensen,
North Germany, in connection with writing and distributing the
infamous Sasser internet worm. He later admitted to police that he
was the author of Sasser and the Netsky-A worm.
Variants of the Netsky worm have been attacking business
networks and individual users since mid-February.
According to press reports, German police executed additional
searches on Tuesday and questioned five people. Two admitted to
investigators that Jaschan had given them the source code for
Netsky and one admitted to helping circulate the Netsky worm. No
further arrests have been made.
"Together the Sasser and Netsky worms have delivered a
devastating double whammy to corporate networks and internet
users," said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for
Sophos. "The original arrest should help the authorities to quickly
unravel this underground worm-writing network, dubbed the 'Skynet
gang', and will hopefully lead to further arrests."
In April 2004 several Netsky strains continued to cause serious
difficulties for unprotected computer users, accounting for the
top five
positions in Sophos's monthly roundup of the worst computer
viruses.
"North German police are rapidly breaking open the ring of
vandal coders responsible for delivering the most significant virus
attacks in 2004," continued Cluley. "This should send a clear
message to virus writers that authorities worldwide are
increasingly taking action against them and are willing to punish
them for their actions."
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.