By Will Sturgeon, 21 December 2004 11:05
NEWS A British teenager has been sentenced for his part in writing and distributing the Randex worm which turned infected PCs into 'zombies', controlled by spammers to send out vast quantities of unsolicited email.
The creation of such 'bot-nets' has become a prolific weapon in the arsenal of professional spammers and their creation through the distribution of worms and Trojans has become big business for virus writers.
In this case the British teen is believed to have been part of an international gang, based in Canada, Europe and the US. The Randex worm is also thought to be behind a series of distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks which crippled ISPs in October 2003.
The 16-year-old, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was handed a six-month suspended sentence at South Cheshire juvenile court, leading one security expert to suggest he escaped lightly because of his age.
Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos, said whatever age the perpetrator it's important the authorities don't "turn a blind eye". Cluley cited figures which suggested the DDoS attacks alone cost businesses around $2m.
The conviction follows the arrest in May of another teenage suspect based in Canada.
Comments
There are 6 comments. Join the discussion
1. Hassan Assaf
I have a better punishment for virus writers and spammers; just leave them alone in a room with someone who has lost all of their data due to one of their inventions.
2. Angus
The kid should of been put in the stocks of his local town centre, and all the local businesses who rely on computers to operate there companies should of been invited down for a good old fasion Egging and Flogging
3. UKdave
And this same UK legal system sends grannies to prison for not paying council tax, and war veterans to prison for not paying a speeding ticket.
If you are intelligent and skillfull enough to cause millions of people to lose millions of dollars, on purpose, you are of an age where you should be punished in the adult world.
Simple as, end of.
4. Peter Lewis
Although I can understand the wrath of those who would hang, draw, and quarter 16 year-old virus writers, don't these people also display an appalling ignorance of their own computer systems? Where were their backups? Were their anti-virus systems up-to-date?
This lack of knowledge displayed by the average computer-user, both at home and in business, is one of the forces that feed the virus and spam 'industries'. In a way, it's the very reliability of today's systems that makes people tend to assume that 'nothing ever goes wrong'. Bring back read errors & head crashes, I say. At least they ensured that the backup & recovery systems were tested from time to time.
'Things ain't like they used to be' mode OFF.
5. SImon Hobson
Peter Lewis writes: "Although I can understand the wrath of those who would hang, draw, and quarter 16 year-old virus writers, don't these people also display an appalling ignorance of their own computer systems? Where were their backups? Were their anti-virus systems up-to-date?"
Well speaking for myself, at work we have up to date AV (as up to date as you can get when infections can spread faster than the AV companies can update the signatures and distribute them), and we have backups. That doesn't stop computers getting infected during that window between infection release and AV countermeasure, and it doesn't stop the cost and hassle of dealing with broken systems. Oh yes, and not to mention the cost of the AV protection and ongoing updates.
Your comment is like suggesting that we shouldn't criticise someone for stealing a car - after all, the owner will have insurance so what's the problem ? Isn't that all a backup SHOULD be for ?
6. alex
it should become unneccessary to steal cars, or form secret gangs.
its more successful to treat reasons,
than to cure symptoms.
when will people understand this?
for email, i would like to have an option to disallow any unknown mail >1k.