30 Jun 2004
Finnish police charge suspected virus author, Sophos comments
Police in Finland have announced that a man who lives in the
city of Tampere has been charged in connection with writing and
distributing an email-aware virus.
The Finnish Central Criminal Police claim that the virus was
mass-mailed to computer users in Finland in January 2004 by the
man, who is in his twenties.
It is believed the virus may not have worked properly due to a
bug in its code which prevented it from spreading to other computer
users.
The arrest in Finland follows a series of other developments in
the battle between the computer crime authorities and suspected
virus authors. A Hungarian teenager has been convicted of spreading
viruses, a suspected Trojan horse author arrested in Taiwan, and
Sven Jaschan was apprehended by police in
Germany in connection with the Sasser and Netsky worms.
"All virus writers should ask themselves: is it really worth the
risk?" said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for Sophos.
"Some virus writers may create malware to show off to their
friends, and others to steal information or cause mayhem. Whatever
their reason it's time they thought long and hard about what the
consequences might be if they get caught."
In the past virus writers such as David L Smith, Simon Vallor and
Christopher Pile have been sentenced to jail for damage caused by
their malicious code.
About Sophos
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.