Sasser kid caught

It took a week for law enforcement to find at least one of the alleged creators (notice all those qualifiers) of the latest Net scourge, and he's a teenager. Either police are getting faster, or international cooperation better, but he appears to have been an 18-year-old German high school student was arrested last Friday and later released, having admitted to creating the Sasser worm that affected hundreds of thousands of computers worldwide, the BBC reports. But he may not have been the worm's only creator - since a new variant was circulating the Net two days after his arrest, and computer security experts told ComputerWeekly.com that they thought a group was behind Sasser.

Apparently, it was a tip to Microsoft - which offers rewards to people who turn in virus writers - that led to the arrest. According to SearchSecurity.com, a group of people in Lower Saxony last Wednesday asked Microsoft about a reward if they turned the young man in. Could it be the group of hackers who launched the worm? See our Sasser coverage in last week's issue of the SafeKids/NetFamilyNewsletter.