/ 10 May 2004

German teenager ‘fesses up to creating Sasser

An 18-year-old German man has confessed to creating the internet Sasser worm which infected millions of computers worldwide last week, police said on Saturday.

The teenager, whom police have not identified by name, was arrested on Friday after a raid on his house in Rotenburg, in the northern state of Lower Saxony, which turned up incriminating evidence.

He was released from custody after questioning.

The Sasser worm struck on May 1, and in less than a week affected thousands of companies and as many as 18-million computers worldwide, forcing some businesses to shut temporarily in order to debug their systems.

The worm attacks through a flaw in recent versions of Microsoft’s Windows operating systems — Windows 2000, Windows Server 2003 and Windows XP –and forces the computer into an unstoppable pattern of shutting down, then rebooting. It apparently does no lasting harm. – Sapa-AFP