What is appropriate punishment for virus writers?

[Feanorcurufinwe]

HANOVER, Germany (Reuters) - German police have arrested an 18-year-old man suspected of creating the "Sasser" computer worm, believed to be one of the Internet's most costly outbreaks of sabotage.

Spokesman Frank Federau for Lower Saxony police said the man was arrested Friday. Federau said the suspect admitted to programming the worm but authorities did not know if he had created all the versions of it.

"He made a confession and the experts at Microsoft have now confirmed that he was the cause of this worm," said Federau. He said he did not have any details of how the suspect was found.

Surprised at the rapid developments, security experts said this could be the single biggest arrest yet in bringing down a virus-writing gang. Federau said that the man, who lived with his parents near the central German town of Rotenburg, did not have any links with organized crime. But the spokesman could not confirm if the suspect had ties to other worm programmers.
http://money.cnn.com/2004/05/08/technology/sasser_suspect.reut

[JohnLocke]

1. Death.

Kidding - :D

[goclark]

2. Great and Where is OBL?

Why is it that other countries can quickly find everyone and we can't find OBL?

[madmax]

3. Castration by gerbils

j/k

[sallyseven]

4. Let's hire him to

help with the voting machines. He can skew them to elect only democrats. How does that sound?

[goclark]

5. I Bet He Could Out Diebold

Diebold.

[JPJones]

7. Auotmatic job offer from Diebold

is more likely.

[MichaelHarris]

6. Pubic hair plucking? n/t

[PfcHammer]

8. Abu Ghraib. The interpreters will straighten him out.

[workforpower]

9. 5 years.

That will be right.

[Cleita]

10. Well, I think he should make restitution to everyone he cost

money to. He owes me $55 that it cost me to get it removed from my computer. If they took all his wages, except the bare bones necessity for him to live off of, he would be paying back people for years. This could cause others to think twice before doing shit like this.

[Feanorcurufinwe]

12. Well we better find him a really well-paying job then, lol.

I bet they will tally it in millions of $ of damages.

[Mika]

13. Maybe others should think twice before supporting/buying Microsnot.

[Cleita]

14. I don't know how you can avoid it since most 'puters are

pre-loaded with it and most software is written for MS operating systems.

[Mika]

11. "What is appropriate punishment for virus writers?" A job at microsoft

If this 18 year old can find the security holes that Microsoft created, then they should hire him to find more.

Microsoft is the entity that should be punished.

[Kellanved]

17. he did not "find" it

The vulnerability was well-known, a patch already out.
The people analyzing the worm were not very impressed with it: most was taken from another worm, only the infection routine was new (but there were many articles about that particular vulnerability) .

[Catch22Dem]

15. A severe whipping by IT professionals

Like myself who have their entire fucking week fucked up by these fucks! FUCK!

[Kellanved]

16. anyway: no big penalty to be expected here

The vulnerability was well known, a patch available. Most suits for compensation will fail, as not installing the patch and keeping the networks open for a well-known vulnerability constitutes grossly negligent acting.

Depending on his defense he might get a very mild sentence: if tried after juvenile law, and claiming that the release into the wild was an accident, then he might get out on probation. Even if tried as an adult, he will almost certainly get out on probation.

On the other hand his harddisk seems to be very interesting: apparently he seems to be also responsible for the Netsky worm - that worm is better usable and might result in a much harder verdict - as well as total life-long bankrupt.

[Merlin]

18. 30 days as Anna Nicole's towel boy. n/t

.

[Unperson 309]

19. Apt Punishment?

Very simple.

You set him up in his own home. Air circulation, water, waste, A/C, lighting, home security system, communications, everything run by a sophisticated computer. Even his very own new luxury automobile.

All run by a very sensitive, highly technological support system.

Which happens to be infected with the virus he unleashed!

Oh... did I mention door locks and monitoring devices and the fact that he is not able to re-program the computer because he has no keyboard or access? Sorry, I suppose I ought to have put that in somewhere...

My bad.

309

[leftofthedial]

20. jail time and financial restitution

and barred from computer use for life

[RebelOne]

21. In my opinion, life imprisonment.

They have wreaked havoc with vital systems, such as hospitals, etc.

[TheMightyFavog]

22. Two words Public Flogging.

End of Line.