Turk, Moroccan arrested for Zotob outbreak

Just as time is shrinking between when a vulnerability is announced and an exploit arrives, it is heartening to see that so too is the time shrinking for arrests of those responsible.In the past, it has taken law enforcement months and sometimes longer to arrest and prosecute those who write and distribute Internet viruses, worms and other malicious software. And quite often, there's no arrest at all.

Farid Essebar, a Moroccan who used the screen name "Diabl0," and Atilla Ekici of Turkey, who used the moniker "Coder," were arrested in their home countries by authorities who cooperated with U.S. investigators in tracking the origins of the Mytob worm; a damaging variant, Zotob; and a third worm, RBot.The FBI praised Microsoft for its cooperation in the investigation, and attributed the swift resolution of the case to strong international cooperation.

UPDATE - 30 Aug: Turkish law-enforcement officials have informed the Federal Bureau of Investigation that they've identified 16 more suspects thought to have assisted in the creation of the Zotob bot worm. The FBI delivered the update during a speech to more than 650 cybersleuths gathered in Monterey, Calif., to share the latest tools and techniques for fighting high-tech crime. Read the InformationWeek story.

For the latest list of Zotob casualties, look at Wave of network worms strike .

Other recent Security Wrap entries on this topic are :
Zotob slams 13 Daimler/Chrysler plants,
Zotob disables Jefferson 911 services ,
Zotob spews billions of spam messages,
Zotob hits NIPSCO call centre and
Zotob costs Holden $6M