German Teen Charged with Creating Sasser

nomoreself writes "Sven Jaschan, only 18 years old, has been indicted by prosecutors in Verden, Germany for allegedly releasing the well known Sasser worm. The PC World article has the details, including the fact that Microsoft's $250,000 reward offer was responsible for informants' coming forth with Jaschan's name, and that Jaschan has actually already confessed to writing several versions of Netsky, as well as the worm in question. Surprisingly enough, the 143 victims that have filed charges are only claiming $158,000 worth of damages." You might remember when he was first arrested back in May.

Comments

Only 18?

[Anonymous Coward]

Boohoo. You do the crime, you serve the time.

Smarts?

[wo1verin3]

You'd think people smart enough to do something like this would be smart enough to shut their mouths. :)

Re:Smarts?

[Jason1729]

The main reason they do it is for bragging rights.

Jason
ProfQuotes

Re:Smarts?

[eingram]

It's this part that gets 'em:

/* Sasser worm version 2!
by Sven Jaschan (sjaschan@mailservice.com) */

Doh! ;)

Re:Smarts?

[servognome]

Not necessarily, it depends on why the person does something like this. In most cases the psychological reasons for creating a worm/virus, also would make the person want to brag about their accomplishment.
Maybe they do it because they want to show off their skills and boost their ego. In most cases people aren't happy knowing they are the greatest in the world, they want everybody else to affirm that feeling so they brag about their accomplishment to get recognition. Maybe they do it to get revenge, and they want those suffering to know who is causing the pain.
I think more than likely the person would end up talking. Just a few drinks at the bar and they might open up about their great accomplishment to uninterested patrons.

Re:Smarts?

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you SEEN how easy it is to exploit some of these bugs? Some require programming knowledge, but some only require a little Javascript or HTML.

It rarely takes brains to exploit a vulnerability. It takes brains to FIND the vulnerability (er, usually), and it takes brains to exploit the vulnerability WELL.

This guy is the dictionary definition of a script kiddie. A little knowledge, a lot of ego.

Re:Smarts?

[stephanruby]

You'd think kids smart enough to do something like this would be smart enough to get caught before their 18th birthdays.

Re:Smarts?

[Richard Whittaker]

Every experienced, professional programmer knows you never put your name in the source code!! Somebody is bound to ask you a year from now what the hell it's supposed to do, and you can never feign ignorance!

Re:Smarts?

[DustMagnet]

You'd think people smart enough to do something like this would be smart enough to shut their mouths. :)

Smart?

Do people here really think writing worms is a sign if being smart? I don't. Only a total loser would do something so mean and stupid.

Does it take some skill? Sure, not everyone can do it, but it's far easier to destroy than it is to build. It's like burning down your neighbor's house to prove you understand fire.

Re:Smarts?

[badman99]

Something tells me this kid is gunna learn a whole lot more about back doors while in jail.

Re:Smarts?

[nyri]

You'd think kids smart enough to do something like this would be smart enough to get caught before their 18th birthdays.

I know you are joking, but it doesn't matter when he was cought. The only thing matters is when the crime was committed.

Re:Smarts?

[Anonymous Coward]

Really experience programmers put someone elses name in there ;op

Re:Smarts?

[tigersha]

Actually he got caught the day after his 18th Birthday and since he wrote the digital organism before it there was some debate about whether he is chargeable or not since he comitted the crime as a youth.

Re:Smarts?

[Sindri]

Whats worse is that a year later you might be fixing your own code and have to face the fact you can't blame anybody else about your crappy code.

Re:Smarts?

[gnovos]

I don't know... maybe he can claim the reward, pay off the damages, and end up the winner for his troubles.

Re:Smarts?

[Coupons]

Just a few drinks at the bar and they might open up about their great accomplishment to uninterested patrons.

I had a landlady like that. After a few drinks, she told me in great detail how she had cleverly killed her husband in an untracable manner.

"What else could I do?", she said. "I'm Catholic. I couldn't get a divorce."

Wow.

[evslin]

Lucky, 143 plantiffs seeking only 158,000 in damages. Over here that kid would have been sued for 158,000,000!

Re:Wow.

[Bombcar]

By my calculation, he could have turned himself in and made $92,000!

(250,000-158,000)

Spy/Ad Ware

[aceat64]

Now if only we could figure out a bounty system to kill off those spyware and adware guys....

Re:Spy/Ad Ware

[LostCluster]

Unfortuantely, those spyware/adware people have a bounty system keeping them in existant... why else would they pull our data our push out ads? Somebody's paying them somehow.

Re:Spy/Ad Ware

[theparanoidcynic]

I think the satisfaction in putting them out of business would be enough.

Why isn't anyone writing a good worm for a change? One that would install itself on the computers of the clueless and destroy their malware. It would roam the internet as an autonomous wave of malware mutilation jacking into networks of its own establishment to retrieve new signature files.

Oh man, now I wish I knew a damn thing about how Windows works so I could go write that monster . . . . . .

Re:Spy/Ad Ware

[stor]

My god yeah.

The designer at my work came in one day and said her machine was running slow. She runs Norton AntiVirus and scans regularly. I asked her whether there were any strange Pop-Ups or browser redirections. She said "Yeah! How do I stop that?"

I said "You're computer is infested with Spyware. Install AdAware and Spybot: Search and Destroy"

She came back to me a couple of days later with a sheepish grin on her face and asked me to guess how many adbots/tracking cookies, etc were installed. I said, "Oh, I dunno, maybe 150?"

She said: "488"

I nearly fell off my chair.

I'm starting to think we need licences to drive computers.

Cheers
Stor

Its not a crime!

[cato kaze]

Or so /.ers will claim. His program caused people to lose money. I don't care if it was linus torvalds himself, anyone who writes a program with the intent to do damage to systems, even though they are unpatched, should still be prosecuted to the full extent of the law and be made to pay. It IS a crime.

(Not meant as flaimbait or a troll, just staving off posts in his defence)

Re:Its not a crime!

[glpierce]

Writing a virus is not a crime. Writing a virus with the intent to cause harm is (ditto for negligence letting it get out). Don't expect him to be defended like the few innocents were.

143 victims?

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought there were more Windows machines than that.

Re:143 victims?

[Jason1729]

Yes, but they could only find 143 people willing to stand up in court and admit that they use windows.

Jason
ProfQuotes

Who's fault is it really?

[LostCluster]

Worms are a two-sided problem. In order for them to happen, it takes a software writer (far too often that software writer being named "Microsoft"...) to create software that has a ready-to-exploit flaw in it, and then it just takes one evil-minded programmer to kick a worm through that hole and make a mess that makes all of us wearing white hats have to do some serious cleanup and deal with downtimes.

While I'm glad the kid is going to get taken to justice, I'm still a little troubled by the fact that all Microsoft doing for their part of it is releasing a "you shoulda run Windows Update" patch and kicking in a quarter-million US dollar reward... both of which they're doing out of the kindness of Bill Gates' heart because there's no law requiring either of them.

I know small time programmers need liability protection from the abuse of their software... but shouldn't a large company like Microsoft be liable for the cleanup costs associated with their own security bugs?

Re:Who's fault is it really?

[One Childish N00b]

Probably going to nuke my karma, but screw it, it's 3 in the morning and I'm ill, so here goes... Hooray for /. managing to turn a story about a criminal (let's not forget this man is a criminal) into a way to bash Microsoft - sure, their software has exploitable bugs in it, but that doesn't make it alright to break them - My real-life windows are easily breakable with a brick 'exploit' and a robber could easily break in and steal my posessions, but that's not the fault of the glaziers. I wouldn't expect the Association of Master Craftsmen to cough up a $250,000 reward for finding a prolific robber in my neighbourhood, even less so if every few days they posted me new one-touch ready-to-fit materials to make my windows more secure.

People can whine and moan about how this is 'really the fault of Microsoft for releasing buggy code' but it really isn't - it's not like Windows creates this worm itself without any outside input, it's the person on the outside exploiting it causing the problems. Sure, Microsoft releases programs with exploits in, but anything can be exploited, and like in the real world, it's not the fault of the manufacturer if a criminal comes along and breaks it.

Personally I think Microsoft offering a reward was a good PR stunt, but not one they had to make. No, I'm not that new here, so yes I do know that any story that can be twisted to have an anti-Microsoft angle will be, but in terms of the whole "it's the fault of the coders" argument, let it die. When Windows crashes and takes your important work with it, that's MS's fault - when some 1337 scriptkiddie exploits a security hole for kicks, that's his fault - same as if my car exploded once a month without warning I'd blame the manufacturer, but if someone broke in and stole it, I'd blame the thief. Zealotry just seems to cloud judgement a little too much sometimes.

cool!

[penguinoid]

That sound you hear is millions of script kiddies saying "Dude, Sven Jaschan is, like, uber 1337!!! I bet I can beat him, though."

In no small coincidence

[Anonymous Coward]

Sven Jachsen's parents have recently purchased a new home and car after a mysterious wire transfer from Redmond, WA. Deustche Bank declined an interview about this.

Fixed Link

[Xeo 024]

Fixed link to May story.

i'm reminded of "catch me if you can"

[circletimessquare]

catch me if you can was a movie with tom hanks and leonardo di caprio that embellished mightily on the real life tale of a check forger and the fbi agent who pursued him.

what is true about the story though is that the check forger in question went on to become one of the fbi's most valuable anti-forgery experts and he eventually went on to make millions helping banks design anti-forgery checks. here is the man's website.

so whenever i see someone like this sasser/ netsky author get caught, or another virus or worm author in the news, i can't help but think: why doesn't microsoft just hire the guy?

seriously, a brilliant criminal is just someone who's skills are being expressed in the right forum, but in the wrong direction. all law enforcement has to do is flip the brilliant criminal into an asset as a condition of a smaller criminal sentence/ fine for them. eventually, they may find real respect and success in their field of expertise on the white hat side of things.

and this isn't fiction i'm inventing, this is exactly what happened with frank abagnale jr. (of catch me if you can fame above).

well, for all i know, this IS what microsoft is doing... anyone have any news anecdotes to indicate this? anyone know whatever happened to the melissa virus author or the i love you virus author that they caught years ago?

Re:i'm reminded of "catch me if you can"

[SnakeStu]

...a brilliant criminal is just someone who's skills are being expressed in the right forum, but in the wrong direction...

This is a potentially-dangerous oversimplification. From what I recall, Ted Kaczynski (the Unabomber) was no dimwit, but -- given the social and political views expressed in his "manifesto" -- would you want to employ him in some manner in hopes of improving postal security? There's potentially much more to a criminal's mind than lack of a socially-acceptable avenue for using his/her skills.

Hrmm...

[Lextar]

1. Write some evil worms
2. Get a friend to "inform" Microsoft
3. Pay $158,000 in damages.
4. Receive $250,000 from Microsoft.
5. Big party!?

Yes, I know - he'll probably have some other problems right now...

I'm glad damages here in Germany are a bit more realistic than in the US.

Re:Hrmm...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm in!
You write the worm, I'll turn you in for the $250,000.

Yes, I'll have a Big Party in your honor.

Re:Hrmm...

[Savage-Rabbit]

he'll probably have some other problems right now...

Yeah, the problem is a 110kg weightlifter named 'Günter' who wants to be his boyfriend. But look on the bright side, when he has served his time, he will be offered a good job with some software firm in the States plus he will probably never again suffer from constipation.

Seriously though ... I hope they do lock him up. Some day one of these virus writers is going to cause major loss of life with his imbecilic plea for attention

1, 2, 3

[penguinoid]

1) Write worm or virus
2) Frame idiot 5cript kiddy and collect bounty
3) Profit!

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

$150,000 ???

[serutan]

Hah. What I want are that guys balls.
In a jar.
On my desk.

Re:$150,000 ???

[sploxx]

Huh? Did your balls get lost?

Meanwhile, OJ Simpson walks around free.

[Anonymous Coward]

I realize these are two separate countries, but it's pretty fucked priorities when someone can lay in wait, then brutally decapitate two people, and then be sentenced to a life of freely wandering the nation's golf courses after snuffing out two lives.

The you get someone who rearranges some magnetic particles on a disk, and this person is thrown into jail like he was the anti-christ.

Moral of the story? Kill someone? Good for you, here's a nine iron. Write some code? Meet your new husband, Bubba.

Re:Meanwhile, OJ Simpson walks around free.

[YrWrstNtmr]

Moral of the story? Kill someone? Good for you, here's a nine iron. Write some code? Meet your new husband, Bubba.

Yes. it sucks. And no, it doesn't happen all the time. Not even most of the time.

If this kid were in the states, and had OJ's lawyers, and the incredibly screwed up prosecution that OJ did, he'd probably be playing golf too.

Time = Money

[KB1GHC]

a little math

5 years * 365 days in a year * 24 hours a day = 43800 hours in prison
$158,000 / 43800 hours = $3.60 an hour

or

5 years * 365 days in a year * work 8 hours a day = 14600 hours of work
$158,000 / 14600 hours = $10 an hour (if he works 8 hours a day)

Damages in Germany

[Florian Weimer]

The damages are so low because you have to prove in court that you actually lost the amount of money which you claim as damages. Over here, we don't have punitive damages.

What about that other denial-of-service attack?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's good that they got this guy.

Now if someone will just offer a reward for catching whoever it was that lanched the years-long-now denial-of-service attack on Java applets.

The attackers posted something about "killing cross-platform Java by growing the polluted Java market." Apparently, their goal was to make it impossible to create trustworthy Java applets, by making it impossible for a website developer to predict whether the JVM client was compatible or not.

This DOS attack has been very successful in making people afraid to use Java applets. It has been one of the most costly DOS attacks in the history of the Internet. I really hope they can identify and charge the attackers.

Other way around, actually

[k98sven]

In most of the (western) world, the damages awarded by courts are pretty down-to-earth.

It's the USA with its runaway legal system which is the sad exception to the rule.

As an american living in europe.. it's nice to see a court system work the way it's supposed to: As a last resort when you can't sort things out between yourselves, and where the damages you receive can only be expected to recover your losses, not make you a profit.

Re:Other way around, actually

[BeeRockxs]

AFAIk none.
And rightly so. Everyone who smokes and does not realize that it's unhealthy shouldn't get money for his stupidity.

Re:Other way around, actually

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know. I would argue that the kid owes the world a great deal more than 158,000. That's hardly a deterrent to someone doing something that bad once again.

We're talking about an 18-year-old here. Do you think he has $158,000? Not. A. Chance.

Most likely, this guy is going to be deep in debt for the rest of his life for this single childish act. And you don't think that's a deterrent?

Do you think he's going to do it again? And do you really think that if they fined him more, that that would stop some other 18-year old with computer skills from doing something stupid?

Re:Other way around, actually

[sploxx]

You're an idiot. If you could only sue to recover losses, the company that wronged you would have no incentive to reform. They could do the same thing to everybody, and maybe only 5% of the wronged will sue, so they will be even on those 5% but profiting by their wrongdoing on the other 95%.
No. This is incorrect. Although IANAL, I can assure you that the CxOs of the company in question would be charged with commiting fraud if they knowingly repeat their unlawful way of profiteering.

Not civil law for repairing damages, but criminal law for the people doing such stuff.

Re:Other way around, actually

[0racle]

Sasser was a cold, there was no real damage done, it was just irritating as hell to those who were foolish enough to have not updated since the previous one that spread using the same problem. In other words had you done the equivalent of giving your system an apple a day, there was no problem. It was widespread, but no irritation equals $158,000 in damages.

Re:Other way around, actually

[DerWulf]

Damages are not meant as a deterrent. How much money he has shouldn't play any role. The amount should be according to the actual damage done. If this equals 150K$ I don't know, thats for the courts to decide. Additionally to restoring the damage he has done to the victims, there should be a punishment as well. Maybe 2 years in prison, as a deterrent.

Re:Other way around, actually

[DerWulf]

I wonder if you'd said the same thing if anyone had created a human virus. No matter how little harm it had done, the outrage would still be deafening.

Anyways, the victim is never to blame. This is the foundation of all western legal systems. Wearing a short skirt makes you not deserving of being raped, leaving your door unlocked doesn't mean others can steal from you and not upgrading to the latest security patch doesn't make it right to infect you with a virus.

When it comes to the damage done, sasser was not a 'cold'. A cold is not a potential security risk, it doesn't turn the infectees into 'zombies' awaiting orders from their teenage lord. And very unlike a cold, sasser doesn't go away on its own. Lets say you have company 'a' with 2000 PCs, all of which could be infected. Now lets say it takes, in mean, half an hour to clean one pc, so the support staff is busy for 1000 man hours while an other 1000 man hours are wasted because the users can't work while their PC is being fixed. The damage is 2000 man hours * $price, without the worm even having to do anything disruptive at all. But it did, it slowed down performance and I guess also stability, decreasing productivity of computer workers which wasn't even factored in. I am aware that the example is not very realistic since all companys probably use firewalls which would prevent infection by sasser. I don't think that matters much though, because not only company man hours should be valued. Private ones count too. And taken the widespreadness of sasser, puny 5 minutes to clean a pc would be enough to add up to huge damage sums.

Uhmm. . .Because. . .

[Sialagogue]

They're too busy hiring all the other brilliant software engineers who managed to find time in their days to *both* learn how to become brilliant software engineers, *and* develop even a minimal ethical framework for how to apply their skills.

Seems like an overwhelming task, but that's why they deserve a good job goddammit.

Jeesh.

How harsh should the punishment be?

[Embedded2004]

When I was 13-16 I had the ability to create viruses with the capabilities as any major virus. And I am sure many slashdotters also had/have these ability.

I actually thought about releasing some viruses, well trojans, would not of done anything on the massive scale as some of this virus, I was not that stupid. Hell, I could actually be in jail now and life screwed up over something like that.

Exploiting windows machines has never be challenging has not been for the past decade. The fact that some kid could wreck their life over a couple lines of VB code is kind of sad. I think it was genius on microsoft's part to get people to want hunt and track down those evil virus kiddies.

It would be easier to create a destructive virus then it would be to rob a couple bags of chips from a store for most kids that create viruses. One might get you a slap on the rist (I am not sure how much you get in trouple for stealing couple dollars worth of food), and the other could get landing in jail and millions of dollars worth of damages.

I honestly do not think for most of these kids the punshiments should be that extreme especially since most of those kids probably only copied and pasted some code, or changed a few lines of code. The punishment should fit the crime, if you can cause millions of dollars worth of damages in under and hours worth of work, then something is not right. I do not see any other way of doing something that bad on a massive scale other then blowing up a building or running around with a gun.

I just hope these kids still get a chance to have a life, and they are only held partially responsible. If someone built a bridge that could be destroyed by walking over and pulling out a nail, and the hole thing would come down. There would be two people to blame. The designer and the person that actually did it. Lets just hope its handled carefully in this case.

Re:"The System"

[clifyt]

Stealing to feed your family?

Call me very kantian, but I have never understood why one person thinks that in any circumstance that because one person has more than another, it should be considered alright to take it away from them and give it to someone.

Would I steal to feed my family?

If I had no other choice, most likely. But I'd expect to face the same consequences as the guy that stole money just to support a crack habit. I'd expect no one looking into the circumstances surrounding what I did other than I did this or didn't do it. Wrong is wrong. There are no grey areas. Its a boolean function. its right, its wrong. Nothing else.

Re:"The System"

[Anonymous Coward]

"So is stealing bread to feed your starving family."

Nice use of the Fat Tony defense

Bart: "Are you guys crooks?"
Fat Tony: "Put it this way. It is wrong to steal a loaf of bread for a starving family?"
Bart: "No."
Fat Tony: "What if you steal a truckload of break."
Bart: "No."
Fat Tony: "What if your family doesn't like bread? What if they like cigarettes?"
Bart: "I guess not."

158K Damages?

[daliman]

The kid should have turned himself in to microsoft and made a tidy profit out of it!

Re:"The System"

[Anonymous Coward]

"Call me very Kantian..."

Actually you're not very Kantian, and your misguided ethics might even stem from a gross misunderstanding of those ethics.

Remember that Kantian ethics does not support consequentialism in any way. The morality of an action is directly linked to that action's motivations, not to its consequences or indeed even its legality. Korsgaard has a lot to say about how many of Kant's conclusions as written (such as the famous one where he declares it immoral to lie to save a friend's life) can be "blocked by his own procedures."

If you think that you should be punished for stealing to feed your family the same way someone should be punished for stealing to feed a crack habit, you have a serious problem discerning between what is "legal" and what is "right." No matter the capitalistic filth that has been shoved down your throat by "the man," socialism was not founded on principles of lazy people leeching off of the community. It's about taking from those with an overabundance and giving to those who lack. It's about charity and love and most of all respect for humanity.

The law should serve humanity, not humanity the law.

SENTENCING RECOMMENDATION (in song!)

[stratjakt]

Sven was a young boy
He had a heart of stone
Lived 9 to 5 and worked his
Fingers to the bone

Just barely out of school
Came from the edge of town
Scripted like a switchblade
So no one could take him down

He had no money, ooh
No good at home
He walked the streets a soldier
And he hacked the world alone
And now it's...

Chorus:
Eighteen and life you got it
Eighteen and life you know
Your crime is time and it's
Eighteen and life to go
Eighteen and life you got it
Eighteen and life you know
Your crime is time and it's
Eighteen and life to go

Cheetos in his fat face
His ass burned with vaseline
It kept his motor runnin'
But he never kept it clean

They say he loved VB Script
Sven 's the wild on
He married trouble
Had cyber with a bum

Click, click! hack 'em up
the party never ends
You can't think of dying
When the butthole's your best friend
And now it's...

Chorus

"Accidents will happen"
They all heard Sven say
He fired his sasser to the wind
That child blew a child (hes gay!)

(solo)

Chorus

YEAH, I THINK GEEK THEMED SONG PARODIES ARE LAME TOO! MOD ME DOWN

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:"The System"

[metlin]

Score -1, Arrogant, ignorant and stupid troll.

Wrong is wrong. There are no grey areas. Its a boolean function. its right, its wrong. Nothing else.

Sure, it's easy for you to say that - sitting in the comforts of your home with an Internet connection and time to kill on a discussion site.

But I bet that the several people who watch their children die of hunger or poverty would bet to differ.

I can understand malevolent people exist, but a large chunk of them are driven to it by the *society* we live in. Rather, the lousy excuse for a society that we live in.

One of my friend works for an international aid agency. Maybe you should see some of the pictures of people worn by war, strife, poverty and diseases.

There is NO right and NO wrong. It is ALL a perspective. When you are on the street with nothing to call your own, stealing is NOT wrong or right - it becomes a necessity. You do not have the luxury of morals when it is a question of survival for you and your loved ones.

If water were made a commodity, and if people died of thirst because they could not buy it, would you consider STEALING water to live a crime? If air were made a commodity, and people died because they could not buy air, would you consider stealing air a crime? It's a survival instinct, you cannot cull millions of years of evolution because of some cock-and-bull morals that you conjured up for yourself.

Narrow-minded and prejudiced thoughts like this make me want to puke. Sheesh.

Put a face to the name

[mixmasterjake]

Don't know why but I am always curious to see a picture of people in the news. There don't seem to be too many of this guy. Probably because he was not 18 and the regulations of the media or whatever. Anyway, I managed to find this one. enjoy...

http://www.sabah.com.tr/2004/08/05/dun112.html

Re:"The System"

[g-doo]

While I don't agree with the boolean function analogy, I do agree with you that stealing to feed one's family does not make it okay. This reminds me of something else than disturbs me - that there are people who think that it's okay to steal from someone with a fairly large amount of wealth (like music artists or CEOs of disliked companies). Just because a music artists' income is much higher than the average income, doesn't mean that they don't deserve every penny they earn. I've heard many people say, "So-and-so has so much money; he can go without that additional twenty dollars." as a basis for stealing.

If we just replace the act of "stealing" with "murdering", then it would put things in clearer perspective. Theoretically speaking, is it okay to murder someone to feed your family?

Re:Give him a blindfold and cigarette, hand me a w

[bigberk]

Give me a fucking break. The 18 year old writes a mediocre virus and you're all up in arms... how about this fucking company (a.k.a. Gator) that has been compromising millions of computers (trespassing, breaking and entering, whatever) for profit? Don't fool yourself, one's a kid being stupid, the other's a profitable company and they're both doing the same thing.

Why is everyone saying that the kid is evil?

[ketonesam]

He was arrested on May 7 after confessing to German crime officials that he originally wanted to create a virus, Netsky, to remove two other viruses, MyDoom and Bagle, from infected computers. After developing several versions of Netsky, he created Sasser, according to the officials. It seems like his intentions were good. The virus didn't really do anything direct malicious, as far as I remember. It just spread so fast that it took up all the network bandwidth. I can see how people might want to be compensated for loss of revenue, but if they put him in jail it should be for negligently causing harm rather than a deliberate crime.

Re:Give him a blindfold and cigarette, hand me a w

[davmoo]

While I can't point you to a specific post, I have made comments every bit as harsh, if not worse, about the scum sucking bottom feeders at the spyware capital of the world otherwise known as Gator. They should be squashed like the parasites they are.

If I had children and one of them came to me and said "daddy, I want to be a prostitute", I wouldn't be happy but I'd learn to live with it and they would still have my love. But if they came to me and said "Daddy, I want to work for Gator", I'd throw them out of the house.

158 thousand in damages

[svvampy]

Seems there may be a discrepacy between the damages you can plausibly put before a court and those you can tell the media.

Re:Give him a blindfold and cigarette, hand me a w

[Kanasta]

What if I build your next house, leave the front door wide open (rather, the door cannot close even after you move in) and put up a billboard (that cannot be removed) that says "this door is not locked"?

Most humans know not to throw blame fully on one side all the time.

Sentence him to work for 5 years @ Symantec

[adsl]

with 75 hours of work a week on Norton Anti-Virus programs.

Re:"The System"

[moonbender]

If we just replace the act of "stealing" with "murdering", then it would put things in clearer perspective.

It also totally changes the meaning. You can't just interchange the two to make a point. Obviously most people would answer your question with a no, but that really has no ramifications for the justification of stealing. BTW, this goes both ways, too: Is it okay to violate the speed limit to feed your starving family?

So maybe stealing to feed your family is not totally okay. I don't think anybody said it was, because the original point was that moral evaluation is not boolean. So it's not totally okay (whatever that means; perhabs nothing really is) but it's more okay than stealing for no good reason at all, and a lot more okay than killing to feed your family, which in turn would be more okay than killing for no good reason at all. Arguably. :)

Re:"The System"

[zangdesign]

There are a couple of problems with your argument (quoting non-existent characters in a serious argument aside):

1. Stealing bread to feed your family in no way compares to writing a virus and intentionally releasing it. One is a benevolent crime, the other is malevolent. Apples and oranges, dude. Apples and oranges.

2. While "legal" doesn't necessarily equate to "right" or "ethical", it's still legal and therefore not prosecutable in a court of criminal law. In order for laws to be "right", you have to change the laws. But then there is the question of subjective vs. objective, etc. and getting everyone to agree on what is "right".

3. Under the law, Microsoft did nothing wrong in this specific case. All blame lies with the writer of the virus. While the law does consider acts of negligence in some cases, whoever decides these things hasn't gotten around to crimes of omission in software coding (and you better pray they don't ever get around to it, either).

I think you would be hard pressed to find any law that applies in this case where Microsoft has any blame in this matter.

PS. I am a skeptic when it comes to the issue of natural law or natural rights. Those are human creations and subject to interpretation depending on who you ask.

Re:"The System"

[sploxx]

Having absolute law is the only kind of law possible in a system run by imperfect beings.
C'mon, that's ridiculous. Following your path of argumentation, you'd need perfect laws first.

They do not exist. Can imperfect beings invent these perfect laws at all? I doubt so. Humans can invent/discover mathematical equations, but you're not a living equation.

IANAL and I don't want to be one (because being a lawyer/judge IS messy and I'd like to stick with physics, which is hardly deterministic nowadays, too!). If YAAL, you should have spotted such fuzzy words as "inadequate", "clear" etc. in law texts many, many times already. I'm sure the appropiate laws contain them. Not only in germany (where I live and where the whole spectacle takes place), but also in the US. Can you give me an exact definition for them?

Or, if you can't, post at least a mathematically sound definition of what constitutes "computer sabotage" here. Good luck :-)

What's with you guys and prison?

[Anonymous Coward]

I saw this story on the front page and thought, "I wonder how many comments before someone makes a reference to prison rape." It was 14, and modded +4 Funny. Forgive the generalization, but what is the deal with Americans and prison rape? Every single time prison is mentioned (and most of the time criminals are mentioned), someone pipes up about men raping other men. I can understand the occasional reference, but this is obsessive. It's creepy.

Re:What's with you guys and prison?

[Scarblac]

but what is the deal with Americans and prison rape?

Apparently, the problem of prison rape is so real in the US, that it is actually one of the worst aspects of going to jail. 1 in 10 males in prison are raped, according to this fact sheet.

Being from Europe (like I assume you are), this sort of thing is completely unbelievable, but there you are.

Re:What's with you guys and prison?

[ReelOddeeo]

Why do you find it so unbelievable?

As an American, I find it unbelievable that Americans are so puritanical about all things related to.... um... sex.

Straight American males are generally obsessed about any perception of them being slightly gay or interested in anything homoerotic.

Look at the scandal over a president's affair.

Now given the righteous condemnation of anything sexual, and probably lack of any experimentation, should you really be surprised?

Re:What's with you guys and prison?

[shawn(at)fsu]

As a criminology student, we went to a state prison in Fl. A muscular inmate said something to the extent of "In jail you don't have to worry about becoming gay, the other inmates make that choice for you"

It is a large problem in institutions, both men's and women's, although in women's prisons they often tend to form whole families, with two taking on the role of parents and other taking of the role of children. It was really fascinating to study.

Semi OT: New Virus/Worm?

[Mr. Sketch]

This is semi-related, but my company seems to have been infected with a new virus that I haven't heard about. It spreads through port 445 to random IP addresses like Sasser, but when it's infected, it kills the task manager and the registry editor whenever they're started. It also has a random file name in c:\windows\system32 and removes all the default network shares (C$, D$, ADMIN$, etc). It seems to put keys all over the registry, I had to just search the registry for the filename and delete all keys it found. I copied the executables to a non-infected machine with the absolute latest Symantec virus definitions and it didn't detect anything, so I quarentened the file and sent it to Symantec.

Has anyone else seen this? I figured out how to remove it by killing the process, deleting all the registry keys with the filename and deleting the file. The Sasser and Korgo removal tools didn't detect anything so it doesn't seem to be one of those. I found some information on google about a similar virus, but it always used the filename msclock.exe and this one is a random filename.

Sociopathic

[petrus4]

The problem is that your archetypical virus author is (from what I've seen anywayz) at least borderline sociopathic. They generally have no regard whatsoever for the consequences of their actions or the potential damage, and likewise are most likely not capable of even being affected by punishment...they can genuinely be *that* fucked up.

My own feeling with such people is that they should definitely be detained/locked up, but only so that they do not have the ability to reoffend. I would also advocate sending them to a psychiatric inpatient unit, rather than jail par se...because at least there they have some chance of treatment/rehabilitation. Putting them in the prison system would probably in actuality be less humane than killing them, at least as far as the American prison system is concerned.

Virus authors are generally sick people, and need to be viewed as such. We need to determine what sociological factors are producing such tendencies, as well as treating individual offenders. If we can isolate the causes, we can erradicate the effect.

Re:Smarts? == Nope, just a criminal...

[PHPgawd]

Making a worm like Sasser does NOT require a lot of "smarts". It's simple scripting, and the kid probably learned all of it by hanging out at a few chat rooms. He probably wouldn't know how to write a script to add two numbers together without copying code from somebody.

It's like saying that a criminal that breaks into a car with a SlimJim is some kind of genius. Most people don't know how to break into a car, but any idiot can get one of these learn how pretty easily.

This kid is just a criminal, and a stupid one at that.

Re:"The System"

[DaEMoN128]

So you say a man that kills a girl because she has a blonde hair (not only a sick fuck but illegal as well) and a woman that shoots and kills a man trying to strangle her (self defence and legal in many places) should both get a life sentance?

Re:"The System"

[goldspider]

I'm still waiting for the part where you explain the need that prompted this upstanding citizen to write a malicious worm, or the evils that society committed against him that forced his hand.

The boundaries of 'right' and 'wrong can blur when necessity comes into play, but can you apply your moral relativism to cases such as this where there is no good served or need met?