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IS THE web a safer place after the capture on 7 May of “Sven J”, an 18-year-old German student accused of creating the Sasser virus?

Antivirus experts are cautiously optimistic. With the arrest of the alleged Sasser author, investigators are setting their sights on a bigger prize. They say there are clear links between Sasser and the Netsky family of viruses that have plagued the internet since February.

While Sasser causes machines to shut down and has disrupted thousands of businesses, the 30-odd Netsky viruses pose a more serious threat to internet security. Infected machines become “zombies” that can be programmed remotely to launch more viruses or onslaughts of untraceable spam.

Investigators point to the close similarity between the two types of virus, to the fact that Sasser actually includes some of the Netsky source code, and to a message in the latest Netsky variant, Netsky.ac, claiming responsibility for Sasser.

This has led investigators to suspect that the Sasser author must have corresponded with the Netsky writers. They plan to scour Sven J’s PC for emails and logs of chat rooms and websites he visited in the hope that they might give vital clues to who wrote Netsky. “The Netsky writers are enemy number one,” says Graham Cluley of UK-based computer security company Sophos.