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Zotob and Mytob Worm Authors Arrested
An anonymous reader writes "The Washingtonpost.com is reporting that two men have been arrested for allegedly authoring and releasing the "Zotob" and "Mytob" worms. The first Zotob, released Aug 14 - just 4 days after Microsoft released a fix for the hole it exploited, infected systems at many major news outlets. Mytob remains one of the most pervasive worms on the 'Net today." From the article: "Moroccan authorities, working with the FBI, arrested Farid Essebar, 18, a Moroccan national born in Russia who went by the screen moniker 'Diabl0.' Arrested in Turkey was Atilla Ekici, aka 'Coder,' age 21. Both individuals will be subject to local prosecutions, the FBI said." Update: 08/26 20:56 GMT by Z : Nana Mous wrote to mention an eWeek blow by blow account of Microsoft's response to the worm. Very interesting read.
removing their virii and others as well as great software such as CoolWebSearch and their ilk all day EVERYDAY of their sentence.
I have a hard time believing that they disabled any of the screening machines. I have operated most of the machines in use (a year ago anyway) and while the larger machines use Windows as the console, the machines themselves use Unix variants inside. The smaller machines are Unix variants on the console as well.
...if I were recognised as even a little bit valuable to their operation from a network-security standpoint, I might have tried to make my career there, but alas, they only wanted me as a screener... (If you want to get promoted in the DHS, it's best if you are either non-white or female... bonus if you're both!) I guess this might be true of just about any government job but it really left a bitter taste behind with me.... oh well... enough off-topic complaints.
I can't speak for airports other than the one I worked at, but while the machines were capable of being networked, I saw no indication that they were actively used as anything but stand-alone machines. (That's not to say they weren't... just that I saw no indication of it.) To me it means that these machines aren't likely to have been infected unless a technician connected a laptop to it and inadvertently infected one. As much as I would like to bad-mouth DHS and the TSA, I can't in this area -- it just doesn't seem likely to me.
Now that said, I know all of their office systems are Windows and could have been vulnerable. But again, the systems at the airport I worked didn't have much in the way of network connections (most of the time, no network connection at all). So again, I don't think airport systems, administrative or operational were vulnerable to network infection.
Well moroccan prisons are certainly not five stars hotels, but I am pretty sure that it's much much more confortable for this guy to have it's trial in his home country rather than in the US nowdays with all the terrorist paranoia going in this country.
I am a Moroccan national, and I have partically renounced travelling to the US after all the horrors stories people I know have told me they have faced in US airports.
Morocco is not really a democratic country (yet), but things are slowly evolving in the good way and nothing similar to Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo has happened lately in Morocco, since Tazmamart which was really horrible for those who have heard about it.