Hungarian virus writer avoids jail

Published: 1 July 2004 y., Thursday
A Hungarian virus writer escaped prison yesterday after he was convicted of writing a virus that infected tens of thousands of Windows PCs. The teenager - identified only as Laszlo K - was given two years' probation for cybercrime offences by Veszprem City Court. Hungarian daily Nepszabadsag reports, via AP, that Laszlo K was initially sentenced to a year in juvenile prison but this sentence was commuted to two years' on probation at a hearing yesterday. As part of his punishment, the teenage must also pay 500,000 forints ($2,400) in court costs. Laszlo K created a worm - called Magold-A - that posed as pictures of Hungarian porn star Maya Gold. In reality, the worm disabled an infected machine's AV software and comprehensively messed with its settings. Among other things, Magold-A contained routines to cripple a user's mouse, open the CD-ROM drive tray or change the Windows colour scheme. Windows users duped into opening an infectious attachment might also expect their machine to start sending Hungarian text files to their default printer. Magold-A, which was first observed by AV firms in February, also randomly deleted image files from a user's hard disk. The worm spread through email, IRC channels, P2P networks and across network shares. Investigators had an easy job tracking down the hapless VXer - he used his own email address to send out an initial batch of infectious emails. In case that wasn't enough, Laszlo K also included his name and the post code of his home (in the town of Ajka, southern Hungary) in viral code.
Šaltinis: theregister.co.uk
Copying, publishing, announcing any information from the News.lt portal without written permission of News.lt editorial office is prohibited.

Facebook Comments

New comment


Captcha

Associated articles

New iPhone app from MasterCard for ATM finder gets thumbs up

The iPhone's new “ATM Hunter” is a a free iPhone application built by MasterCard that allows users to quickly find the ATMs that are closest to them. more »

House says Visa, MasterCard are to blame for security hacks, card compromises

In security breach cases last year, such as Hannaford Bros. supermarket and the card processing firm Heartland Payment Systems, cybercriminals gained access to millions of consumers' credit card details. more »

Ingenico warns contactless technology will divide the market

Ingenico, a provider of payment solutions, says contactless technology will split the retail market this year, improving sales figures for early adopters and costing those who shun the additional investment in this burgeoning technology. more »

Patent office validates many claims in widevine

Widevine Technologies today announced that the US Patent and Trademark Office has reconfirmed the validity of many claims of Widevine's U.S. more »

Nokia makes high-dollar investment in mobile payments startup

Nokia Corp., the world's largest maker of cell phones, is making a large investment in California-based Obopay Inc., a startup that's pushing person-to-person mobile-payments technology. more »

Banks invest in more tech to find synergies between anti-fraud, anti-money laundering

The increasing amount of overlap and duplication of data, tasks and processes in their anti-fraud and anti-money laundering divisions is driving banks to seek synergies between compliance, risk management and security, according to a new report from Datamonitor. more »

Global IPTV subs exceed 20mn

The total number of IPTV subscribers worldwide passed the 20mn mark at the end of 2008, according to new figures from Informa Telecoms & Media, taking into account both disclosed and estimated figures. more »

"Television is like the invention of indoor plumbing"

The IPTV World Forum opened its doors this morning on a bright London day, and the mood was equally optimistic indoors, with the conference rooms packed for keynote presentations from Christopher Schläffer of Deutsche Telekom, Christophe Forax from the European Commission and the BBC's Richard Halton, charged with making Project Canvas a reality. more »

Card fraud pushes consumers to non-bank online payments

A new Gartner Inc. report suggests that financial fraud could drive consumers away from banks and into the arms of electronic payment systems, such as PayPal, that they perceive to be more secure. more »

MasterCard: PayPass 50 million issued

In the last year this more than doubles the number of cards and devices in circulation around the world. more »