"In an expected move following his arrest and confession earlier this year, an 18-year-old German student has been indicted on computer crimes for his work writing and releasing the Sasser and Netsky worms," reports E-Commerce Times.
"Sven Jaschan, who was turned in by a peer who sought a US$250,000 reward from Microsoft, was arrested last May when he admitted to making Sasser as an effort to eradicate two other prominent viruses: Bagle and MyDoom.
"Jaschan, who faces a maximum of five years imprisonment under German law, fits the teenage profile of a typical virus writer, but does not appear to have been driven by traditional motivators such as notoriety or profit.
"Instead, according to an interview in the German magazine Stern, Jaschan is portrayed as a curious young man with good intentions and bad results."
And it seems like bad times all round for virus writers - they even seem to be encoding job applications into their worms, claims Reuters.
"Technicians at British anti-virus firm Sophos said on Friday they had discovered a plea for work inserted deep in the lines of code for two new computer worm outbreaks, "MyDoom-U" and "MyDoom-V".
""We searching 4 work in AV (anti-virus) industry," read the message. Because it was inserted in the code, the message was only visible to anti-virus professionals.
"It's hard to tell if the creators of these new versions of the MyDoom worm are being serious, but there is no way that anybody in the anti-birus industry would touch them with a barge pole," said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for Sophos."
