The FBI and Microsoft combined forces yesterday against the shadowy teenage world of the computer hacker by offering $500 000 bounties for information on the creators of MSBlast and SoBig viruses.
Microsoft executives said the bounties, part of a $5-million fund earmarked for rewards, would be paid on conviction of those responsible for the spread of MsBlast and SoBig, the two most devastating computer attacks.
The two programs, which targeted Microsoft’s operating system, caused millions of dollars of damage earlier this year. They shut down systems at hospitals, airlines and on personal computers.
In Washington, Microsoft and the FBI said that cyber crime posed a far more serious threat than suggested by the juvenile and geeky image of its perpetrators.
”These are not just internet crimes, cyber crime or virtual crimes. These are real crimes that hurt a lot of people,” Microsoft’s general counsel, Brad Smith, said in a statement
”The malicious distribution of worms and viruses… are far from victimless crimes,” said Keith Lourdeau, acting deputy assistant director of the FBI’s cyber division.
The reward offer coincides with growing public pressure on Microsoft and law enforcement agencies to devise a formula to protect the world’s computer networks, after this year’s devastating strikes by the MSBlast worm and the SoBig virus.
The Blaster virus caused an estimated $3,5-billion worth of damage to North American computers, unleashing a flood of data and jamming networks.
In August, the FBI arrested a Minnesota high school student accused of writing a variation of the Blaster worm.
However, there has been no breakthrough in the hunt for the creator of the SoBig virus, and investigators fear the malicious program may signal a more threatening trend of virus writing, once dominated by young amateurs.
Unlike the majority of computer attacks security experts suspect SoBig, which infected hundreds of thousands of computers allowing them to be hijacked by outsiders sending spam emails, was designed to make a profit.
Security experts familiar with the cyber dragnet said the reward could generate new leads in the hunt for its creator.
”Apparently they haven’t had too much luck, which is why they are resorting to offering money, which could work for Blaster,” said Mikko Hypponen of Finnish anti-virus firm F-Secure.
It was uncertain how the bounty would be viewed in the hacking community. ”It is not going to change the culture of virus writers, and it is not going to deter the writing of viruses,” said George Smith of internet analysts Global Security in California.
He described the bounties as too little, too late, and accused Microsoft of avoiding improvements to software security.
The world’s first computer virus, the Morris worm, released by a Cornell university graduate, infected about 10% of the computers on the internet in 1988.
”This is as much about public theatre as bettering security,” Smith said.
”We are stuck with the regime that we have in which software has to be serially patched. We can’t go back now and fix it.” – Guardian Unlimited Â