Arrests are made in search of virus writers

Two virus writers were arrested (unrelated incidents) in Germany.

One of them has admitted to have written the recent Sasser worm (admitting to it doesn't necessarily mean he wrote it - they don't make that distinction here, and might not care), and the other is suspected of writing "Agobot" and Phatbot".

The article notes that the major ones that they are going after are "Skynet" and these two guys appear to be on their own and unrelated to Skynet. (Skynet being a reference to the automated computer system in the Terminator series which the US Military built, it was an AI that turned against the world and started WWIII by spreading a series of debilitating viruses out, crippling our computers and then turning the world's robots and computers against the humans, eventually taking over the world).

Skynet is currently the source of the various NetSky viruses and their many variations which are largely intended to infect Windows PCs and then both spread themselves and also send out spam.

Even though these recent arrests were made in Germany, the "Skynet Anti-virus Group" claims to be based in Russia and is thought to be related to organized crime there.

Sounds like something out of a really awful movie plot.

Posted by Eric at May 8, 2004 02:24 PM | TrackBack