Man held over £65m computer virus

A man suspected of inventing a computer virus which cost US companies and government agencies up to £65 million has been arrested after a joint operation by the Metropolitan Police and the FBI.

Officers from the Computer Crime Unit swooped on a house in Surbiton this week and seized equipment.

A 21-year-old man, who has not been named, was arrested under the Computer Misuse Act. He has been bailed to return for further questioning next month. Officers launched an investigation a year ago after the discovery of the Lion Worm virus, which caused havoc in hundreds of firms and government departments across the US.

Alan Paller of the SANS Institute, a computer security company in Maryland, said the virus affected up to 20,000 machines. The way it was designed made it particularly difficult to eradicate.

Mr Paller said: "In simple terms, they broke into the computerand put a programme on it which stole private information and then made other computers do the same. It was really hard to get rid of. It would have cost people around $2,000 for each machine and that is before they suffered management and legal costs. The total cost would have been up to $100million."

He said it would have been much worse had an earlywarning system not come into effect. This was the worm which proved that the earlywarning system worked. In Washington, a witness to the House Committee of Government Affairs said the Lion Worm proved the resilience of safety systems. But he said investigators could never be sure what they were dealing with.

"It could be a system probe to find vulnerabilities, an intrusion to steal data, an act of teenage vandalism, an attack to disrupt service, or even an act of war."

Two years ago, the "I Love You" bug hit 100million computers worldwide and caused more than £6.25 billion damage.