One virus writer 'responsible for 70 percent of infections'

[Spyder32]

From Zone-H.org:

Netsky and Sasser author Sven Jaschan, who was arrested in Germany earlier this year, is responsible for 70 percent of all virus infections so far this year, according to Sophos Sven Jaschan, self-confessed author of the Netsky and Sasser viruses, is responsible for 70 percent of virus infections in 2004, according to a six-month malware round-up published by antivirus firm Sophos on Wednesday.

Jaschan was taken into custody in May by the police in Lower Saxony, who said that he had admitted programming both the Netsky and Sasser worms, something that experts at Microsoft confirmed. During the five months preceding his arrest, there were at least 25 variants of Netsky and one of the port-scanning network worm Sasser.

Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos, said it was staggering that one person could be responsible for so many infections. Richard Starnes, president of security industry group ISSA UK, was also impressed: "Is he going to put this on his CV?" he asked.

Cluley said there is still a chance that others may be implicated in the Netsky virus, although so far no one else has been arrested.

"The full story of the Netsky gang isn't known yet. We know some of his fellow students have been questioned, but the real motives are not fully known," said Cluley.

According to Sophos, the Sasser worm came out on top with 26.1 percent of infections, while Netsky.P, Netsky.B and Netsky.D take second, third and fourth places respectively. The only non-Jaschan viruses in the top ten are MyDoom.A (fifth place), Zafi.B (sixth place), Sober.C (ninth place) and Bagle.A (tenth place).

"Sasser may have taken top spot, but six of the biggest viruses of the last six months were Netsky and Bagle variants -- these caused a continued nuisance for PC users the world over as their authors entered into a very public game of virus writing one-upmanship," said Cluley.

Starnes said that although Jaschan has been arrested, there are always other people willing to step into his shoes.

"Virus writers tend to grow out of the hobby, but hackers do not tend to stop. There is a high turnover rate in the virus writing community. There will always be somebody there to step in to fill the gap," he said.

Cluley agreed, but pointed out that organised criminals are increasingly getting involved in virus writing and are less likely to be caught because they tend to be more careful.

"There is a greater criminal element in virus writing than ever before. If you are an organised gang making money out of viruses and hacking, you don't go around bragging or having a playground scuffle that results in one of your number grassing you up to Microsoft," said Cluley.

Here's a link to the original article.

[cyclops07]

Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos, said it was staggering that one person could be responsible for so many infections. Richard Starnes, president of security industry group ISSA UK, was also impressed: "Is he going to put this on his CV?" he asked.

damn sure will! I think he will get a job even b4 came out from prison (maybe microsoft will bail him out.. . )

[albn]

70% of infections? That is a big claim. There were several authors that have written hundreds, if not thousands virii, and that includes YAM, NuKE, Phalcon/Skism, and others. Read up on 40Hex... however, these are older infections using ASM.

[albn]

That's amazing, 70%... I'd be pretty damn proud of my self to have created such worms to do such an astonishing number of infections

Why? heh

[s3nate]

wow...70%, damn....haha i've been infected with both sasser and netsky....and boy was sasser annoying...lol and my AV didnt detect it!!! but it did detect netsky....I somehow go netsky right after i reformatted my comp...odd....wonder how i got it..lol

-S3nate

[kryptonic]

Originally posted here by mrkoww
That's amazing, 70%... I'd be pretty damn proud of my self to have created such worms to do such an astonishing number of infections.

why would you create a virus in the first place?

[Spyder32]

..Or be proud of it. Anyways, yeah I thought I had Sasser on my WinMe machine until I realized it was a smaller, less known virus. Dealt with that and from there went to symantec and learned of Sasser's symptom's in the event I'd be caught by the worm or whatever. Haven't been infected since.

[Cybr1d]

Crap, I haven't gotten any of these viruses on any of my machines . The only virus I have ever caught was bloodhound on an unprotected machine but other than that, everything else has been blocked. LOL I kinda feel left out


I have cleaned up customer machines which had netsky, sasser, sobig and mydoom at the same time

[Spyder32]

Cybr1d: Consider yourself lucky. Or consider yourself just really intelligent and a really security-minded individual. I've only had a few viruses on any of my machine's but most of them was cause I put them there to test and to look at the coding and whatnot. In my life, I've probably only gotten around 3 viruses that I myself didn't know about or didn't protect from or whatever. Other than that, the rest are from testing purposes on a test box or whatnot.

[valhallen]

70% of infections? That is a big claim. There were several authors that have written hundreds, if not thousands virii, and that includes YAM, NuKE, Phalcon/Skism, and others. Read up on 40Hex... however, these are older infections using ASM.

its 70% of infections this year not ever

v_Ln