A court in Rabat, Morocco, has sentenced Farid Essebar and Achraf Bahloul to jail for their part in writing and spreading the Zotob worm. This malware affected computers at CNN, ABC News, New York Times, Caterpillar, Boeing and the United States Department of Homeland Security. Farid Essebar, a 19-year-old science student, got two years in jail and 22-year-old Achraf Bahloul one year.

The Zotob worm exploited the critical MS05-039 security vulnerability in Microsoft's software in August 2005. Among Zotob's victims was the CNN news station whose programming was disrupted because of infected computers.

Essebar, a Russian-born resident of Morocco, is believed to have used the handle "Diabl0", a phrase embedded inside the Zotob-A worm. The Diabl0 handle has also been found in 20 other pieces of malware, according to a court statement from July this year.

According to authorities in Morocco, Essebar and Bahloul worked closely with an accomplice in Turkey, named as Atilla Ekici. Essebar and Ekici were both arrested in Morocco and Turkey 12 days after the initial attack, in July 2005, after a large investigative effort by Microsoft, who set up a reward of 250k. It is believed that the intention of the attackers were to perpetrate credit card fraud.

Lawyers said the convicts would appeals against their convictions.

More about this on Wikipedia and on Sophos' web site (link below).

Related links: (Open in a new window.)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farid_Essebar
www.sophos.com/pressoffice/news/articles/2006/09/zotob-jail.html

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