Wormholes in hacker case

[InfoSec News <isn () c4i org>]

Forwarded from: Marjorie Simmons <lawyer () carpereslegalis com>

http://www.smh.com.au/cgi-bin/common/popupPrintArticle.pl?path=/articles/2002/11/02/1036027090587.html

By Patrick Gray 
November 5 2002 

The creator of the Anna Kournikova Internet worm, Jan De Wit, lost an
appeal against his conviction in a Dutch court last week. He was
sentenced to 150 hours of community service in September, 2001 for
creating and releasing the worm. De Wit, aka OnTheFly, had appealed
because he was afraid that a conviction would adversely affect his
career.

The primitive e-mail-based worm spread like wildfire in February,
2001, infecting hundreds of thousands of computers. It arrived in an
e-mail message promising raunchy pictures of the tennis star.  If the
recipient opened the attachment, temptingly titled "Anna
Kournikova.jpg.vbs", the worm would activate, sending itself to
everyone in the receiver's address book.

De Wit isn't a master by anyone's definition. He used a pre-made kit
to write the worm, and most hackers regard him as a script kiddie.

Script kiddies are hackers who have little real knowledge of computer
security, or more importantly how to bypass it. They rely on scripts
and tools that real hackers have written. Even other hackers regard
them as mere pests.

The Kournikova worm was fairly harmless and caused no direct damage to
the systems that it infected. It did, however, cause mail servers
across the world to become congested and in some cases seize up
completely.

During the appeal, De Wit claimed that he was innocent of the charge
laid against him because the worm did not cause any discernible damage
to the infected systems.

"Dutch law says there has to be damage in order for a conviction to
occur, and there was no damage," said Theo Jansen, De Wit's lawyer.

Jansen said his client did not mean to cause as much havoc as he did,
and handed himself in to police when he realised the impact of what he
had done. However, the prosecution did introduce at least some
evidence of damage caused by the worm.

Documents provided to the Dutch prosecution team by the US Federal
Bureau of Investigation suggested that it had caused $US60,000 (about
$A110,000) of damage among 55 affected organisations. But Jansen says
the FBI "shook it (the damage figure) out of their sleeves" and that
the FBI's explanation of how the amount was calculated was inadequate.

During the trial, the court heard that De Wit had downloaded the virus
toolkit he used to make the worm from the Internet.

At the time that he released the worm, De Wit, who now works in a
computer store, had just dropped out of his first year at university.
His conviction will be permanently recorded, although he is still
considering taking the matter to a higher court.



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