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Teen admits he made Sasser
08/05/2004 22:15 - (SA)
Hanover - German authorities said Saturday they arrested an 18-year-old student who confessed to creating the "Sasser" worm, which generated computer chaos across the globe as it infected hundreds of thousands of machines.
The teenager, whose name was not released, was arrested on Friday in the northern village of Waffensen, where he lives with his family. Investigators in nearby Hanover said they were put on his trail by a tip-off earlier on Friday from Microsoft.
In a search of the suspect's home, they confiscated his customised computer, which contains the worm's source code.
"As a result of the student's detailed testimony about the viruses he spread, he has been identified clearly as the author," the state criminal office in Hanover said in a statement.
The worm raced around the world over the past week, exploiting a flaw in Microsoft's Windows operating system.
The teenager is being investigated on suspicion of computer sabotage, which carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison, said Detlef Ehrike, speaking for the state criminal office. After being questioned, he was released pending charges.
Unlike most outbreaks, Sasser does not require users to activate it by clicking on an e-mail attachment. Once inside, the worm scans the Internet for others to attack, causing some computers to continually crash and reboot.
The teenager told officials that his original intention was to create a virus that would combat the "Mydoom" and "Bagle" viruses, removing them from infected computers. In the course of that effort, he developed the "Netsky" virus further - and after modifying it created Sasser.
No thought of consequences
"The student did not give any thought to the resulting consequences or damage," investigators' statement said.
Microsoft spokesperson Sascha Hanke told a news conference in Hanover that the company, which last year started offering rewards for tips leading to the authors of viruses, had received calls pointing it toward the worm's creator. He did not identify the callers.
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.
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.
The German government's information technology security agency said there were four versions of Sasser.
"The first version was amateurish," spokesperson Michael Dickopf said. However, the others "were clearly different in the damage they caused."
Police said the German teenager was responsible for all the versions.
- AP
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