Feds close in on Blaster suspect

Virus author due to be arrested later today

By John Leyden • Get more from this author

Posted in Malware, 29th August 2003 12:19 GMT

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The FBI are poised to arrest an unnamed 18 year-old today in connection with the release of a variant of
the notorious Blaster worm.

The teen has already been questioned by investigators and put under surveillance, The Seattle Times, citing two U.S. Justice Department sources, reports. He is expected to be arrested later today and charged with releasing a variant of the original Blaster worm.

The 18 year-old suspect was reportedly seen by a witness testing his virus, which was based on Blaster-A, the ur-worm

More details of the investigation are expected to emerge today from the FBI and US attorney's office in Seattle, the agencies leading the investigation.

Investigators believe a separate, as yet unidentified, individual created the original Blaster worm.

The Blaster-B variant of the worm was released on August 13, two days after the original worm. Like the original, the Blaster-B worm targeted the same Remote Procedure Call (RPC) DCOM vulnerability in Windows to spread.

The Blaster variants created widespread network congestion and infected hundreds of thousands of computers, causing misery for home users and businesses alike. The worm was also used to launch a DDoS attack from infected computers on Windowsupdate.com. This attack failed. ®