NEWS A 23 year-old has been arrested in Spain for allegedly writing the Raleka-A virus.
The man from Madrid is the first to be charged with such a crime in the country. The virus hit computers worldwide in August 2003 and managed to infect around 120,000 computers in two weeks, according to a police spokeswoman.
The man is believed to the leader of a hacking group, Akelarre, where he went under the alias 900K. The authorities managed to track down the suspect by mounting a technical investigation of the virus, the Guardia Civil said, adding they had also impounded several computers at the time of the arrest.
The virus itself is almost a precursor to the Blaster worm, which caused carnage to email systems in August, by using a Microsoft security hole to allow the hacker to gain control of the machine.
Graham Cluley, Sophos' senior technology consultant, said in a statement that with virus writers currently getting more police attention and Microsoft's reward scheme to back them up, the criminals might want to think twice before embarking on a cybercrime spree.
"The Raleka arrest further illustrates that computer crime authorities around the world are better equipped than ever at hunting down the perpetrators of hacking and virus crimes. Virus writers should be asking themselves whether it's really worth taking the risk," he said.
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1. anonymous
Dear sir,After reading your article on the Spanish virus writer.I would like to know what type of person was infected by the virus he wrote?Were they all business's or just private people?This day and age with modern "fire-walls" that obviously can be by-passed I am amazed, slightly naiveley, that people get caught so easily.Especially business's who rely every day on computers.The man who allegedly wrote the virus was he a computer expert if there is such a thing.Or was he a 19 year old spotty geek who has a pal who taught him all the computer languages to make virus's and just for the hell of it went to town.