Zotob Authors Nabbed

The good news about the Zotob outbreak is that we're unlikely to see future versions after two men - one in Morroco and one in Turkey - were arrested Thursday.

From The Washington Post's article:

The FBI and Microsoft Corp. collaborated with law enforcement officials in Turkey and Morocco to secure the arrest on Thursday of two men thought to be responsible for creating computer worms that infected hundreds of thousands of computers worldwide this year.

Police in Morocco arrested Farid Essebar, 18, a Moroccan national born in Russia who used the online moniker "Diabl0." Authorities in Turkey arrested 21-year-old Atilla Ekici, known by the online alias "Coder."

Essebar and Ekici are suspected of releasing the "Zotob" and "Mytob" computer worms that were designed to take advantage of flaws in Microsoft's widely used Windows operating system. Both of the suspects' nicknames can be found in the original computer programming code for Zotob, according to the FBI and Microsoft.

In addition to Mytob and Zotob, vnunet.com reports that the pair are responsible for the Rbot worm family, too.

Here's to hoping for a fair trial and harsh punishment.  The computer laws of Turkey and Morroco may both be put to test by this case.