The FBI has identified a Washington state 18-year-old as the writer of one version of Blaster, the pestiferous worm which whipped around the Internet early this month and exploited a Microsoft Windows security flaw to infect over half a million computers around the world.
Officials told reporters early August 29 that the teenager was under investigation and his arrest was pending. An estimated one out of five companies have had at least some of their computers infected with Blaster, security company TriSecure told reporters
The teen is suspected of writing a second version of Blaster that was even more powerful than the original which appeared a few days earlier, according to Reuters. He isn't considered Blaster's creator, but his B variant reportedly did more damage than the original Blaster.
Blaster takes infected computers and turns them to proxies for possible attacks against Microsoft's technical services Website. Expected attacks were thwarted when Microsoft took the site offline at the suspected attack times. Though Microsoft offered patches to fix the hole Blaster exploits, they got help from an unorthodox source: At mid-month, a worm appeared which went into Blaster-infected computers, kicked Blaster out, and patched the exploited flaw.
Late August 28, Reuters reported officials found a witness who saw the teenage suspect testing his Blaster version, prompting this witness to tip off authorities.
