Netsky, Sasser Author Admits Guilt

As expected, Sven Jaschan, author of the Netsky and Sasser worms, pled guilty in German court yesterday. His country of jurisdiction (Germany) and his age at the time of the criminal acts (17) will likely result in little more than a fine as punishment. Jaschan was apprehended after his schoolmates responded to the Microsoft bounty program designed to catch virus writers. Jaschan created and released several variants of the Netsky worm before his eventual arrest. Netsky.P continues to dominate virus prevalence charts 16 months after its initial release.

However, it is not known whether Jaschan actually created the long-standing Netsky.P variant - or any variant after Netsky.K for that matter. Just prior to the discovery of Netsky.L, Jaschan threatened to release the source code for the worm. Doing so allows others to easily recreate new Netsky variants and thus continue the attacks, even after his arrest. Currently, at least 38 variants of Netsky have been discovered.