[gumboyaya]

Throw this little twit on a pile at Abu Ghraid, and good riddance.

[kissmyconservativebutt]

I am a sytems admin and luckily none of my machines were bothered by this particular work. In the past however, I have been forced to work late, weekends, etc. to fix problems that these virus writers think are so damn great.

Give this basta$d to me and I will beat him to a bloody pulp. When I am done, we will heal him up and send him to the next admin.

[mrs. a]

What did George Bush know and when did he know it? I got hit by the Sasser worm and I DEMAND an answer!

[longjack]

The "Spiegel" report said the kid was a middle track student, that is, not in the college entrance program. He confessed immediately when the police showed up.

His mother runs a computer emergency repair business.

longjack

[governsleastgovernsbest]

I bought a new laptop this week (Averatec 3200 series, about $1,000, like it a lot).

Anyhow, within 10 minutes of setting it up, it got infected with Sasser, and it took me about 30 frustrating minutes to install the patch because it kept on shutting down during the install process.

Serious question: given the untold millions of dollars of damage and lost hours he's caused, what do people think would be a fair punishment? I'd say 10 years.

[FourPeas]

That's actually pretty fast to find the worm writer. I wonder what tipped them off.

[marshmallow]

These kids have the same mindset as vandals. They derive pleasure from breaking stuff and causing inconvenience to people. Instead of busting up subway cars, bus shelters and school property they do it in cyberspace.

[stripes1776]

The problem of computer viruses does not lie with high school students like this one or any one else who writes viruses. What if we lived in a world in which there were no locks on the doors of our houses?

When it comes to computers, we live in that land. None of the popular operating systems was designed from the ground up for security. Security came as an after thought. It was applied piecemeal as problems developed. Computer security resembles a patchwork of bandaids applied in the dark.

So tonight when you go to bed, don't lock the front door but instead put a bandaid across it and see how secure you feel. Rather than direct moral outrage at some high school kid who knows a lot about programming, turn that concern to vendors of operating systems like Microsoft, IBM, Sun, Red Hat and the others. Computers won't be secure until the vendors give us secure operating systems.

I won't hold my breath.

[paleocon patriarch]

Truth is that this kid did the millions of users who ignore patches and let their firewalls down a big favor by releasing a fairly benign worn instead of the monster that could have exploited the LSASS flaw. I bet the next LSASS worm is a real nasty one.

I got caught with a new logon script that had it's firewall down - live and learn.

[Revolting cat!]

Let's hope the Germans have a better sense than the Americans who, immediately after a plea bargained jaywalking ticket, would offer the perp a 6 figure position securing the network at a major corporation.

[VOA]

bump for publicity.
This topic (Sasser and it's young creator) got lots of coverage on the computer shows
on talk radio here in Los Angeles today.

[Pharmboy]

Solitary confinement for the little sumb*tch for 2 years...the virus and worm makers need to know there will be very severe consequences.

[litany_of_lies]

Troubling points from the article: After being questioned, the teenager was released pending charges.

Surely they jest. Nope, it's Germany, where Monica Seles's attacker walks free.

The German government’s information technology security agency said there were four versions of Sasser.

“The first version was amateurish,” spokesman 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, in addition to variants of the Netsky virus.

Oh really? The same guy writes a crappy worm and spreads it, then three "great" ones? Seems if it were the same guy, he would not have spread the first one, but rather "improved" it before sending it out.

This seems a little too convenient to me.