29 August 2003 The Federal Bureau of Investigation has arrested a man in connection with the Blaster worm that caused havoc on the Internet worldwide when it was released in mid-August.
The worm’s author, named as Jeffrey Parson and known online as ‘teekid’, was shopped by a witness who claims that he saw the the 18-year-old testing it prior to its release. According to a spokesman for the US Attorney in Seattle, Washington, Parson had been arrested and questioned by authorities on Tuesday.
The authorities said that the man has admitted that he was the author of the Blaster-B worm, but not the original, Blaster-A. He is believed to have taken the original worm and added new code to it to make it more disruptive. However, Blaster-B did not prove to be as virulent as the original and few PCs were infected.
The Blaster worm exploited known security flaws in Microsoft Windows operating systems that were disclosed in mid-July. Although a patch was released to coincide with that announcement, most users had not downloaded and installed it when the worm was released.
Operating systems affected included Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows NT and Windows Server 2003. Windows 95, 98 and Millennium Edition (ME), based on older code-bases, were unaffected.
Blaster was one of the most widespread security attacks this year and was followed eight days later by the SoBig-f virus, which is believed to have been written by spammers.
