Jaschan walks free

Suspended sentence for Sasser author

Sven Jaschan, the young German man who admitted to writing the Sasser worm, has been given a 21-month suspended sentence for his crimes.

Jaschan, who also admitted to creating Netsky.A, was tried behind closed doors this week by a juvenile court in Germany, since he only turned 18 the day before he was arrested. Indeed, it was largely thanks to his youth at the time of the crime that he avoided a harsher penalty - the maximum penalty for releasing a virus being a five-year jail sentence.

Jaschan was arrested following a tip-off from some of his (presumably now former) friends who were hoping to become the first individuals to benefit from Microsoft's anti-virus reward program. Microsoft has revealed that the two informants will be able to share the reward, now that Jaschan has successfully been convicted.

After publicly making it known that he was looking for work in the IT security industry, Jaschan was offered a job in September 2004 by German security firm Securepoint.

It would seem that Jaschan is now free to start work.

08 July 2005

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