Goofy stuff on the web

Son-of-a-Weizen · May 8, 2004

One laptop down and a $180 repair bill at this end thanks to this suspect/idiot. :angry: Where's that eBay 'I'll kick Your Ass' thing?....I want to place a bid.

Suspected 'Sasser' creator arrested in Germany

Worm infected thousands of computers worldwideThe Associated Press

Updated: 5:43 a.m. ET May 08, 2004BERLIN - German authorities have arrested an 18-year-old man suspected of creating the "Sasser" computer worm, which infected thousands of computers worldwide, an official said Saturday.

The suspect, a high school student, was arrested Friday, said Frank Federau, a spokesman for the state criminal office in Hanover.

Police and prosecutors on Friday searched his parents' house in the northern town of Waffensen, Federau said. He did not release the man's identity, and said he did not immediately have details of how the suspect was tracked down.

Prosecutors handling the case could not immediately be reached for comment Saturday. German newsweekly Der Spiegel reported, without citing sources, that the CIA and FBI also were involved in the hunt for the worm's creator, whom it identified as Sven J.

The worm raced around the world over the past week, exploiting a flaw in Microsoft Corp.'s Windows operating system.

Unlike most outbreaks, Sasser does not require users to activate it by clicking on an e-mail attachment. Sasser is known as a network worm because it can automatically scan the Internet for computers with the security flaw and send a copy of itself there.

On Monday, the worm hit public hospitals in Hong Kong and one-third of Taiwan's post office branches. Twenty British Airways flights were each delayed about 10 minutes Tuesday due to Sasser troubles at check-in desks, while British coast guard stations used pen and paper for charts normally generated by computer.

Home users were particularly hit hard, computer security experts say, because they generally lack the know-how to install patches and tend not to have the firewalls needed to keep Sasser from spreading to other computers via the Internet.