Blaster Writer Caught

Henry V .009 writes "The FBI will be arresting an 18 year-old in connection with MS Blaster, reports The Washington Post." According to the article, the teen was witnessed testing the worm, and then turned in by a bystander. It's also worth noting that this is merely one of the Blaster variations. Hope whoever it was had fun, because a world of pain is waiting in store now.

Comments

Also reported...

[FireFury03]

Also reported by the BBC

Re:Will be arresting...

[Zocalo]

He may be in custody already. To actually arrest someone requires a warrant, but it is possible to hold someone without a warrant for limited time provided they are allowed their phone call etc. I suspect they already have the guy and are just waiting on the necessary paperwork to arrive from the DA's office.

Re:Im guessing it was a mate of his

[El_Muerte_TDS]

Virus writers don't have friends

"They have a chronic lack of girlfriends, are usually socially inadequate and are drawn compulsively to write self-replicating codes. It's a form of digital graffiti to them,"

how odd, not the situation here in UK

[DrSkwid]

Arrest is being detained against your will by the state.
If he is not free to go at any time he must have had his rights read to him.

"you are under arrest, you have the right to remain silent etc."

All police officers carry a warrant card which gives them the power of arrest.

You can be held without charge for a fixed period, 72 hours iirc. (you look it up!)

What is it called then in the States to be held involuntarily by the police while you wait to be arrested?

Curiously our police invented something called de-arresting. The used to arrest hunt-sabs on spurious charges but when we sued the arse off them they stopped. They would nick you removed you from the scene, keep you in a van for 2 hours then de-arrest you. No paperwork, usually no credible witnesses and no due process.

Fuck 'em. In the end they just made sabbing illegal full stop.

Fuck all you hunters, shooters and fishers. I hope you lose your arms in a thresher.

Re:how odd, not the situation here in UK

[DrSkwid]

At that time it's best to not say anything more.

Especially if you have not been read your rights. Technicalities like that can sometimes get you away scott free, guilty or not.

Usually, however, you are asked at interview if you have been read your rights.

I used to help run arrest awareness workshops. I made a great bastard copper. I've had people crying without much encouragement. If you are involved in any kind of protest group that is likely to brush with the law, practice at hostile interviews is invaluable. When people are scared their mouths tend to flap. They are conditioned by TV to start explaining *why* they committed the "crime". Cops don't care about truth and justice, they care about arrest rates. They want both parties to admit wrong doing and let the CPS/DA decide who to charge.

Re:how odd, not the situation here in UK

[Anonymous Coward]

We're going waaayy off topic here, but hey, it's fun :-)

"It's really inhumane to thin the herd of an overpopulated free range animal which would breed itself into starvation if left unchecked."

You've not been to the UK have you?

When the poster was refering to hunting it was because they (hunters) hunt foxes most of the time. A "sab" is a hunt saboteur. A hunt is usually a big pack of dogs, some people on horses and a bunch of people on foot. It's not a "survival" weekend.

The fox will usually have been located beforehand and there has been stories in the press of foxes with cubs having had food left for them to encourage them to breed.

In short, no one's going to eat the fox, it will get chased to exhaustion and then pulled apart by the dogs. (or it might escape of course)

If you wanted to keep the natural population of foxes to a lower level, it would seem to be both more humane and less costly to simply shoot them.

However, the people on the horses are usually extremely rich, and it's them the hunts are organised for.

The only situation close to what you're thinking of is up north where the deer populations have to be culled, usually on Forestry commision land and usually by professional marksmen (or "shooters" depending on your viewpoint). There's a handbook on how the deer should be culled in order to follow the best currently believed practice.

There's also an invasive grey squirrel problem, which are somtimes culled but not exactly "hunted". Usually a bloke with an airrifle employed by the local nature reserve in order to give the native red squirels a chance.

Not sure why the parent poster was bashing fishermen. Maybe the outdoors scares him/her.

He is already under surveillance

[abhikhurana]

According to Seattle Times, The 18-year-old suspect already has been questioned and put under surveillance, and is expected to be in custody by 1:30 p.m. (PST) and will also be charged as an adult

Re:A network administrator?

[danheskett]

Nope, thats not how law generally works in this country. If I am walking down the street and see some guy about to kill another guy with a hammer to the head I am under no legal obligation to attempt to dissuade or stop the would be killer. The same principle applies throughout all of American style-law, and I can't think of any exceptions where a person has an affirmative duty to thwart crime or criminals.

More info

[GyroTech]

A quick snippit of info over at The Register seems to hint that the kid did in fact write Blaster-B, not the patching varient (does anyone remeber CodeGreen after CodeRed??).
Seems that he was 'under surveillance', was caught testing the varient, and is going to be charged with writing the varient.

Not quite

[Maxwell'sSilverLART]

He's innocent....Alleged writer. Innocent until proven guilty beyond all reasonable doubt.

Close. He is to be presumed innocent until proven guilty; the presumption doesn't change whether or not he is actually innocent, it only affects how he is tried.

For example: all those of you sharing MP3s of Metallica's latest: you are guilty of copyright infringement (as defined by statute); however, if (when?) you are picked up on charges, you will be presumed innocent by the court until proven guilty. That presumption does not change the historical fact that you did, indeed, break the law.

/pedantry

Its MSBlaster NOT Blaster

[Mooncaller]

Stop propagating the MS spin. Just because MS has convinced the mainstream media and the Anti-virus software houses ( whos entire buisness is dependent on MS) to change the name does not mean everyone needs to do the same. The only true name for the virus is MSBlaster.

Re:Will be arresting...

[darkmeridian]

To clarify this parent post, there is a distinction legally between being detained and being arrested. The police can detain you if they believe that you are a witness in a case. To arrest you, however, they must have probable cause. Once they arrest you, you have specific rights. Delaying the arrest as late as possible helps the authorities.

TeeKid exposed?

[YrWrstNtmr]

Jeffrey Lee Parson, 18, of Hopkins, Minn., known online as "teekid."

Could this be our little perp?

(from the TrojanForge.NET archive:
"Teekid
im looking for a verfy tiny irc bot that all it does is have a web download , and a very stable udp feature , thats it :) possibly in asm or c , like evilbot would be good , thats what im using now , but if you have more than 100 or so in 1 chan a bunch ping out , and it has some un-needed features (the icmp is shit)
possibly open source would be good too :)"

and

[from the Google cache of t33kid.com]
"my little p2p worm spreads via kazaa and imesh, downloads a file from web. No biggie."

The actual page has ben.....taken down, shall we say.

Re:A witness turned him in?!?

[Josuah]

I'm sure he's busy running a big frickin magnet over his hard drive(s) right about now...

Oh, you are so a script kiddie. Any serious cracker knows you gotta cook your drive, preferably in a fireplace. Don't have one? Boil it (you don't want to just cook it over the stove coils or on a sauce pan because that will just start a fire).

Here's the google cache of his website

[core plexus]

Here's his page, which I see says its powered by trend micro.

-cp-

Re:A witness turned him in?!?

[Josuah]

Power outages. Your RAM disk would get hosed. :P Assuming you didn't invest in a UPS, that is.