Zotob (computer Worm) - Arrest of The Coders

Arrest of The Coders

On August 26, 2005, Farid Essebar and Atilla Ekici were arrested in Morocco and Turkey, respectively. They are believed to be the men behind the worm's coding.

A signature in the Zotob worm code suggested it was coded by Diabl0 and the IRC server it connects to is the same used in previous version of Mytob. Diabl0 is believed to have incorporated the code of a Russian nicknamed houseofdabus whose journal has been shut down by authorities, just after the arrest of Diabl0. The coder (Ekici) probably paid Diabl0 (Essebar) to write the code.

"He says it's all about making money, and that he doesn't care if people remove the worm because it's the spyware stuff that he installs that's making him the money, Taylor said in a conversation with me."

On August 30, 2005, controversial reports emerged from different anti-virus firms. Sophos declared that several people had access to the Mytob source code (a variant of the worm). On the other hand, F-Secure declared that it has found multiple variants of Mytob that were coded after the arrest of Essebar. Those declarations suggest that Essebar is only a part of a larger group of Dark-side hackers behind the spread of the malware.