The Metropolitan Police's Computer Crime Unit and
Finnish law enforcement agencies have arrested three men for
allegedly being members of a virus-writing gang.
A 63-year-old man in Ipswich, a 28-year-old man living in the
Grampian region of Scotland, and a 19-year-old man in Helsinki have
been arrested on a charge of conspiring to infect computers with
malware. Those arrested are suspected of being members of the m00p
malware writing group.
Police are now examining computer equipment seized at the
residential addresses raided.
Security software company Sophos said the m00p group was
believed to have written malware to create a zombie network (or
botnet) of compromised computers under their control.
Such a network could be used to spread viruses and spyware
across the internet, without the owners of the compromised
computers knowing.
Sophos said many pieces of malware included references to the
m00p gang, including the W32/Dogbot spyware worm, and the
Troj/Hackarmy-C, Troj/Santabot-A, Troj/Shuckbot-A, W32/Rbot-BF, and
W32/Tibick-A threats.
References to m00p are also contained inside the Stinx Trojan
horse, which was circulated widely, attached to e-mails with the
subject line "Photo Approval Needed".
In 2003, Welsh virus writer Simon Vallor was sentenced to two
years’ jail for malware he had created.