Virus arrest: Two caught in Zotob sting

Law enforcement officials have arrested two men suspected of unleashing a pair of computer worms, including last week's Zotob, which hit servers at American Express and The New York Times among other high-profile victims.

Farid Essebar, age 18, a Moroccan national born in Russia, was arrested in Morocco, and 21-year-old Atilla Ekici, a Turkish resident, was arrested in Turkey, according to a spokesman for the FBI. Both suspects were detained towards the end of last week and will be prosecuted in the countries in which they were arrested, said the spokesman.

Bresson said that Essebar, who went by the nickname 'Diabl0', and Ekici, known as 'Coder', are suspected of creating both the Mytob and Zotob worms.

The Zotob worm attacked computers running Microsoft's Windows 2000 operating system, and the worm and its offshoots last week hit PCs and servers worldwide, including machines at ABC, CNN and Daimler Chrysler.

Zotob included some of the code used in Mytob, an email worm that first started spreading in March. To date, more than 100 variants of Mytob have been spotted.

The FBI initiated the investigation into Mytob and Zotob, cooperating with Microsoft and others to trace the origins of the worms, said the FBI spokesman. Law enforcement agencies in Morocco and Turkey were instrumental in the investigation, he said.

The bureau alleges that Essebar wrote both the Mytob and Zotob worms and then sold them to Ekici.

Microsoft hails the arrests as an example of a successful partnership between the private sector and law enforcement.

Brad Smith, general counsel at Microsoft, said: "Our entire industry, especially in partnership with law enforcement, is able to move much more quickly and in a more sophisticated way today than was the case, say, two years ago, and that is certainly part of what made it possible to get to this point within two weeks."