Dialer worm writer fined

[sarettah]

http://www.webuser.co.uk/news/news.php?id=63114

Porn dialler virus writer sentenced
April 12, 2005
Marc Ambasna-Jones

A virus writer that wrote and distributed a porn dialler worm has been sentenced in Italy today but narrowly escaped a prison term.

A 39-year old Italian man, the creator of the Marq email worm (also known as Voltan or Zelig), has been ordered to pay a 3000 euros fine.

The man, as yet unnamed, wrote a computer worm which dialled premium-rate phone numbers in an attempt to steal more than 100,000 Euros (approximately £71,000). If he had not agreed with the court in Milan to pay the fine, the man would have had to serve 14 months in prison.

The Marq-A email-aware worm directed computer users to a website 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 a 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.

"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," said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for Sophos.

"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 the defence of their computers a priority if they wish to connect to the internet."