1&1 Internet (www.oneandone.co.uk), a web hosting provider, announced on May 17, 2004 that it helped the Criminal Investigation Department in Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany, with information that led to the arrest of the perpetrator of Phatbot/Agoboth worm. Phatbot affected 1&1 Internet in February. The worm was intended to start a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack against the systems it infected. The company’s technical staff has developed a patch to protect its systems and released it on the Internet to help other service providers fight the worm.
The data that allowed identifying the alleged virus writer was found on a client server in 1&1 Internet’s data center facilities. The alleged virus writer was apprehended last week in Lorrach, Germany.
Andreas Gauger, CEO of 1&1 Internet, said that based on the attacks to the web servers owned by the company, 1&1 Internet pressed computer sabotage charges with the Police Department in Karlsruhe, Germany. He added that the information that the company gathered was provided to the German authorities and led them to the alleged originators of the worm.
