German authorities have alleged that the man is also the hacker responsible for the nearly 30 variations of the Netsky worm, a wave which began almost three months ago.
Security analysts had speculated that the same individual or group coded both the Sasser and Netsky worms, thanks to a boast embedded in Netsky.ac, the latest version which hit the Internet a week ago. On Friday, researchers at Symantec-- independently of the analysis under way at Microsoft and the FBI -- confirmed that the two worms had such striking similarities that it was a high probability they shared the same author.
The week-old Sasser worm, which first went wild on the Internet April 30, infected Windows systems worldwide -- estimates of the number range from in the hundreds of thousands to over a million -- and plagued businesses and consumers with slow-downs and crashed networks.
The arrest is the first traced to information provided to Microsoft under its AntiVirus Award Program, a $5 million fund that Microsoft established in November 2003. The fund, designed to tempt informants to squeal on the creators of major worms and viruses, has offered three $250,000 rewards in the past without leading to an arrest.
Although Microsoft didn't post a similar bounty on Sasser, the fund was instrumental in getting the information that led to the arrest, said Smith.
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