An 18-year-old Moroccan national and a 21-year-old resident of Turkey have been arrested for creating and spreading computer worms that disrupted services on computer networks of major U.S news organizations and other institutions earlier this month, the FBI announced Friday.

Farid Essebar, a Moroccan who used the screen name "Diabl0," and Atilla Ekici of Turkey, who used the moniker "Coder," were arrested in their home countries by authorities who cooperated with U.S. investigators in tracking the origins of the Mytob worm; a damaging variant, Zotob; and a third worm, RBot.

Its nice to see the people who write worms caught quickly. Its usually the case that it will happen quickly, or never. Its safe to assume that most of the time involved with this had to do with the international aspect of it, rather than finding a trail pointing to the culprits.

Microsoft Senior Vice President and General Counsel Brad Smith said even if strong anti-hacking statutes aren't in place, Morocco and Turkey have consumer fraud statutes and consumer protection laws that could apply.

It should be noted that Microsoft is (still) part of the problem, but not worth harping on (too much). Everyone should know it by now, Microsoft isn't the victim; the people using their products are. Just think what "anti-hacking statutes" would consist of if it was up to them to decide. Violation of property in the context of worms is very different from making modifications to your x-box, but I'm sure Microsoft would not see it that way. Remember, DRM is going to save you from worms. And if you believe that, I'll tell you another story. Maybe one with elves and magic, or something..

Good thing the FBI is going to take the lead in helping the Moroccans and the Turks with this.

Security experts say there are vast criminal networks with specialists in every aspect of a virus or worm attack.

"It's a lot like the movie industry: You have producers, you have the actors and you have the distribution network," said David Maynor of Internet Security Systems. "This network is much the same way. You have people who decide what they want to get done, they pass it to the producers who will actually make it happen, get someone to package it up and make sure it works, then the distributors whose only job is to distribute it to other people."

I'm not even going to touch that one. Just pretend I said something nasty about ISS and the movie industry.

Turkey, Moroccan residents arrested in computer worm probe