Yesterday in federal court in Seattle, 19-year old Jeffrey Parson pleaded guilty to writing the B variant of Blaster worm. The confession came almost exactly a year after the virus was originally spread, on 13th of August 2003.



Parson (aka "Teekid") admitted hearing about the virus in news, then downloading a copy, modifying it and unleashing it from 50 computers he had previously hacked. Blaster.B infected tens of thousands of computers around the world - but wasn't nearly as big a problem as Blaster.A was.

Parson now faces between 18 months and over three years in jail and could be ordered to pay massive compensations to affected companies. He was tracked down by FBI and Secret Service fairly quickly after the outbreak, largely because Mr. Parson had instructed the worm's backdoor to connect back to himself via his own personal website, www.t33kid.com.



The original author of the Blaster worm remains at large, with Microsoft offering $250,000 bounty for information leading to his arrest.