Premium rate dialer virus writer sentenced
The creator of the Marq email worm has received a 14 month sentence and been fined 3,000 Euros for writing a computer worm which dialled premium-rate phone numbers, which tried to steal over 100,000 Euros. The man wrote the W32/Marq-A email-aware worm (also known as Voltan or Zelig) to direct innocent computer users to a web site where a malicious program posing as a screensaver could be downloaded. If run, the worm would change the phone number used for accessing the Internet to a premium-rate number based in Aruba in the Dutch Antilles at the cost of 1.80 Euros per minute. It is claimed that more than 57,000 minutes were logged on the premium-rate number in just three days at the end of October 2003. If the virus had been allowed to continue, it is estimated that 1.2 million Euros would have been stolen every month. The Italian financial police were able to freeze the money accrued by the worm, which was first sent to a New York bank account, then transferred via Venezuela before ending up in an account belonging to a "ghost" company in Aruba. The crime was discovered and blocked after the man who lives in Venezuela came to Italy to increase the number of premium rate telephone connections. Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for Sophos commented, "More virus writers are being caught and convicted than ever before, and the Italian authorities did well to cut this worm's author down to size. Increasingly we are seeing viruses and worms which are designed to steal money or resources from the infected computers of innocent people. Everybody should make defence of their computers a priority if they wish to connect to the Internet." The virus writer, who was aged 39 at the time of his arrest by the Italian authorities in November 2003, is thought to have avoided a harsher sentence because it was his first offence and he co-operated with the authorities in their investigation.
Reproduced from an article published by IT Vibe
© IT Vibe
The original article can be viewed here:
http://itvibe.com/news/3455/
Permalink Bookmark Digg this story
