Zotob Crooks Nabbed By Microsoft

[Tami]

Zotob Crooks Nabbed By Microsoft
Jason Lee Miller

If you're going to be a high profile cyber criminal, might as well have the names to match. The FBI has tracked down the creators of the infamous Zotob worm that caused grief for Windows users worldwide. Their names? Atilla and Diabl0. Apropos, I think.

They're young super villains, too. Farid Essebar (a.k.a. Diabl0), an 18-year-old Russian-born Moroccan, was nabbed by Moroccan police for creating the worms Zotob and Mytob as well as the Rbot bot worm.

Meanwhile, in Turkey, Turkish authorities picked up 21-year-old Atilla Ekici (a.k.a. Coder), who paid Diabl0 for his work and distributed the worms that infected thousands of PCs.

Microsoft's Internet Crime Investigations Team was instrumental in aiding the FBI to track down the source of the nasty viruses. The team began monitoring Zotob last week and followed the electronic trail back to the source.

Microsoft's offering of a $250,000 reward apparently yielded little.

"The arrests were not made based on a tip-off; they were based on our Internet Crime Investigations Team," said Microsoft's Brad Smith.

[url=\"http://www.webpronews.com\"]source: WebProNews[/url]