A German firewall security company is said to have hired the
teenager who has admitted responsibility for the Sasser and Netsky
worms.
Securepoint, based in Lueneburg, northern Germany, has employed
18-year-old Sven Jaschan and is training him to be a security
software programmer. According to a company spokesman, "he has a
certain know-how in this field."
"It's very important that the security community does not send
out a message that writing viruses or worms is cool, or a route
into employment," said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant
for Sophos." Jaschan is infamous for his involvement in the Sasser
and Netsky worm outbreaks - it might have been less controversial
if he had found employment in another part of the IT industry."
Hidden inside some
versions of the Netsky worm was a distributed denial-of-service
attack against educational websites based in Switzerland, USA, and
Germany. Other variants attacked file-sharing
websites such as KaZaA. A report published by Sophos in
July revealed that 70% of all virus infections in the first six
months of 2004 could be linked to Jaschan.
"There can be no doubt that the viruses Jaschan is said to have
written were deliberately malicious, attempting to steal computer
resources and blast innocent websites off the internet," continued
Cluley. "The customers of the firewall security company will no
doubt ask for an adequate explanation for his employment - and
those who lost money as a result of his worms may wonder when they
will be compensated."
Sophos believes that virus writers can be rehabilitated, but
that it sends out a dangerous message if former virus writers gain
hasty employment in the computer security industry.
Sophos notes that by coincidence a new version of the Sasser
worm, W32/Sasser-G, was
discovered today.
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