Four months after the MSBlast worm tore through the Internet, Microsoft announced it had set up a $5 million fund, the Anti-virus Reward Program, to be used for rewarding people who offer information leading to a conviction with $250,000. Since the launch of the fund, a number of suspected authors of malicious code have been arrested, but none have been convicted.

Simon Perry, the vice president of security at Computer Associates, said the rewards may lead to script kiddies informing on each other, but it won't bother the organized criminals who have started using experienced software writers to create "malware," or malicious software, designed to enable them to take control over a large number of PCs.

By Munir Kotadia at CNET.

[ Read more ]

Related items

• Review: Viruses Revealed (28 April 2003)