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.

Comments

Re:What a bunch of shit

[tont0r]

i do know that UPS had a shit time working things with their airline transports. it boiled down to manually checking the packages. a friend of mine was lucky enough to get picked for that job. so its not all propaganda.

Re:This was the proper response.

[wasted time]

Slashdot has sections? I thought they just had horrible taste in color schemes and goofy icons.

Re:This was the proper response.

[coolGuyZak]

Then I would say it doesn't belong in YRO at all. Remove it entirely from this section. It doesn't have anything to do with "rights", as far as I am concerned. IT has to do with 2 dumbasses creating a worm and releasing it into the wild, with solely malevolent intent.

Heh. This will be seen as a flame... but I am of the opinion that these two should be tracked down and punished... IE. Their rights wern't being harmed when they were arrested, nor was there a "triumph" of personal rights over the government.

YRO should be reserved for real discussions of rights, not bullshit stories that explain the arrest of virii creators. My problem is not that it is on a boundary--it doesn't fit at all.

Re:It's a real shame - missing step

[loraksus]

Actually did that on a machine just yesterday after spending 2 hours cleaning out the viruses, spyware, porn dialers et al. Doesn't look exactly like ie, but close enough for these users...