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German Youth Convicted for Sasser Worm
dan dan the dna man writes "The BBC is reporting that Sven Jaschan, author of the Sasser Worm, has been found guilty of computer sabotage and illegally altering data. He received a 21 month suspended sentence, as he was tried as a minor. He was 17 years old when he wrote the worm." From the article: "Sven Jaschan avoided a jail sentence by the skin of his teeth because he was arrested within days of his 18th birthday...However, in the grand scheme of the virus world, it's the organised crime gangs, which are increasingly emerging to make stacks of money through targeted attacks, that should be dealt the harsh sentences - over and above the dumb teenagers."
Ok, so he causes untold millions in damages (yes, real damages) worldwide, get a 21 month probation slap on the wrist, which clears off his record after 3 years if he keeps his nose clean. AND he gets a job in the antivirus industry. Sounds more like a reward than a punishment. If I ran a multinational company that was hit bad by this, I'd be in civil court suing the hell out of him right now. He deserves to be in jail, not reaping rewards for his behavior.
Interesting...especially since the german courts seem to think that it's the creation of the virus that is the crime, not the release of it into the wild.
Do you have any references for this?
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
I second the question - is it illegal in Germany to write a worm or virus? Or only to release it?
Same questions regarding the USA ... ?
In all the news reports and discussion of these cases, references to "writing" or "creating", and to releasing or spreading, are used interchangeably. It seems to me there is a big ethical difference and there ought to be a legal difference as well.
Consider the following series - at what point does the actor go wrong (a) ethically (b) legally?
in the grand scheme of the virus world, it's the organised crime gangs ...that should be dealt the harsh sentences
This is, however, a very good point. Being a retard and letting something loose beyond your control is one thing, deliberately making a bid to own/disrupt as many machines online you can for purposes of blackmail/theft/etc is another.
We can't overlook the impact of these dumb kids, and certainly should such abuse become more prevalent they should be dealt with in increasing harshness to act as a deterrent...
However, the biggest problems I've seen are not dumb kids that let loose something bigger than they expect.
Dumb kids tend to take out unpatched, insecure, or non-fault-tolerant systems.
Those same systems are the target of focussed criminals who will bring them down to collect a ransom, take over them for illegal uses, or attempt to steal from them every last piece of your personal info.
In short, dumb teenagers like this create viruses which are definately an annoyance and a potentially huge disruption, but the organized crime gangs are the ones that are killing the internet by making it a dangerous businessplace.
sooo let me get this straight. a BORED teenager writes a DESTRUCTIVE piece of software, causes MILLIONS and MILLIONS in damage, and simply because of the semantics of AGE he gets a suspended sentence.
Moral of the story: we should all have written a terrible bit of code that caused damage when we were 17 because we would have been offered an excellent security/programming job after the dust settled. Meanwhile, scores of under-appreciated, hardworking, ETHICAL programmers go with no work or very low pay. Justice system? give me 5 minutes alone with "Sven Jaschan". grrrrrrrrr.
letting """kids""" off for this.
ridiculous.
remove his fingers.
The simple fact here is that the punishment he is receiving does not fit the crime in scale and it sends out a really bad message to others in his community that they have a Get Out of Jail Free Card if they are under 18... I'm sorry but teenagers today are in many cases much smarter than adults. If the excuse is whether they are mature enough to distinguish between right and wrong then I question that argument because I think people learn that at around age 10... and if they can't comprehend the difference by age 14 then I would guess there is an issue psychologically. This kid caused millions in damages and should face not only time in prison but also some hefty monetary fines as well.
News Reporters Make Tasty Polar Bear Treats!
Unfortunately it's the "organised crime gangs, which are increasingly emerging to make stacks of money through targeted attacks," that ARE the "dumb teenagers"...
There have been several proposals in the UK to require registration of all knives, including kitchen knives
Actually, the UK proposals include the banning of "long" kitchen knives from ownership by "the public." Presumably chefs and household gourmands are not "the public." Of course, this is completely ridiculous. People should be locked up when they do bad things, not when they own equipment (like cars, or gasoline, or kitchen knives, or computers) with which they can do bad things.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Unlike in the USA, minors *cannot* be tried as adults in Germany under any circumstances. In fact, the opposite is true: a young person can be tried as a minor instead of an adult if they're behind in their development, for example, even if they're over 18.
And that's the way it should be.
quidquid latine dictum sit altum videtur.
It looks like M$ is not the one to blame here (although we do so love to blame them).
Don't worry. We can still blame them. They only released the patch a month before Sasser started hitting machines in the wild. That is hardly enough time to test and apply a patch across a large enterprise, especially given MS's terrible track record for patches. Like many other patches, this one conflicted with a variety of other software packages that customers had to stop using if they wanted to be protected. The worm runs on and propagates to other machines on Windows 98, 98SE, and ME operating systems (although it's other functions fail). MS has still released no patch for any of these systems and has no plan to.
Aside from the above concerns, many versions of Windows are just not easy to update, especially across a great many machines and updates often break functionality or need to be applied in a specific order. Updates are often dependent upon other updates, which may also break something important. MS is the one who wrote an OS without concern for security and we are all still paying for it. Writing the worm was like intentionally tossing a match in an open window. Designing Windows was like deciding to sell all buildings with floors made of extremely flammable material. There is plenty of blame to go around.
There is a legal theory that fits the situation: computer viruses could be declared a public nuisance (which is essentially what they are at this point) and then it IS the responsibility of the victim to protect himself.