By INQUIRER staff: Saturday 08 May 2004, 10:49

* UPDATE 16:40 BST Security firm iDEFENSE said three arrests were made yesterday and one individual has confessed to writing code. Ken Dunham from the firm said the leak of Phatbot-Gabot code may have helped the authorities to trace the worm writers. But he adds that he wouldn't be surprised if multiple authors were involved in the different variants. He also adds that the arrests do not necessarily mean we've seen the end of the attacks.

AN EIGHTEEN year old was picked up on suspicion of making the Sasser worm, which has had a bad effect on millions of PCs during the last week.

The German press reports that the college student was arrested in Rotenburg, north Germany.

He was arrested yesterday, but the local police are still investigating details of the case.

The police have not revealed the man's name or any other details, at press time.

The Sasser worm caught a number of corporations and many more home users off guard, as it attacked machines using unpatched Microsoft systems.

Source

I'm glad they caught him! I was ok at home however at work I was done for a day as I had to wait for tech support.

people just have to learn to keep their virus definitions up to date

I agree 100%. While I had no problem at home, at work however, I don't have administrative rights on my computer hence the huge delay getting the patch.

Dot9M

We had to reformat our pc last week as it had the Isass virus.

All I can ask is, what pleasure do people get from spreading these things. Yeh, maybe our anti virus software could have been more up to date. But still, it all seems so pointless and troublesome.

Oh well, I guess we all learn the hard way at some point!!