To those who knew him in the sleepy German village, he was a nice, shy young fellow who spent too long on his computer in his bedroom at home.
For 18-million computer users, though, Sven Jaschan was not your average introverted teenager, but the author of an internet virus called Sasser that caused havoc from Britain to Australia and untold financial harm to businesses in between.
On Sunday details began to emerge about the 18-year-old, who has been arrested and released after police raided a house in Waffensen, between Bremen and Hamburg, in Lower Saxony where he lives with his parents.
Sven, it seems, had not intended to cause misery for personal computer users.
According to reports, he may have been trying to help his mother, Veronica, who owns a struggling computer business called PC Help.
Sven, so the story goes, claimed he was trying to write an anti-virus programme that would automatically delete viruses such as Netsky from computers. But he succumbed to peer pressure after his schoolmates who badgered him into writing a more malicious programme, said the Suddeutsche Zeitung.
As soon as officers marched into his home Sven confessed he was the author of the virus and was taken in for questioning. He told prosecutors that he simply didn’t think about the consequence of releasing his virus.
This from a student who was not even the brightest in class.
The German daily Bild quoted his computer teacher saying: ”This nice, introverted young man has done this? I can’t believe it. Sven was a good student. In informatics he finished the course with a 2 [a B grade] from me.”
He was seized after a tip-off from Microsoft last week.
With only 800 inhabitants in Waffensen, his home was easy for investigators to find, ending a week-long hunt involving the FBI and police forces around the world. Sven released the virus on to the internet over the bank holiday weekend. It slipped into tens of thousands of computers around the world, exploiting a loophole in Microsoft’s operating system.
Unlike most viruses it doesn’t rely on email attachments, but installs itself on a computer’s hard drive before sending itself on over the internet.
It targets Microsoft Windows, especially Windows 2000, and household computers are especially vulnerable. Experts say that the unfortunate can be infected within 30 seconds of logging on to the internet.
Sven has just finished school and was intending to take his abitur [school leaving exams] this summer before going to college where he hoped to study informatics.
Under German law Sven would normally face up to five years in prison for computer crimes. But as he celebrated his 18th birthday on April 29, it is likely he will be tried as a juvenile and receive a much lighter punishment.
Microsoft offered a bounty for information leading to the arrest of the author of the Sasser virus. A Microsoft spokesperson said: ”There was excellent cooperation between national and international police to find the author of the virus that allowed him to be tracked down so quickly.” – Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004