Zotob worm authors jailed

Two Moroccan men have been jailed for releasing the Zotob computer worm, which wreaked havoc on an estimated 250,000 Windows PCs last year. Farid Essebar, 19, of Morocco was sentenced to two years in prison on Tuesday by a Moroccan court, according to a report by Agence France-Presse. An accomplice, Achraf Bahloul, also of Morocco, received a one-year sentence, the report said.

The worm primarily affected Windows 2000 systems, taking advantage of a bug in the operating system's Plug and Play service that had been patched by Microsoft just days before the outbreak. Though it did not infect as many computers as more widespread worms such as Sasser or MyDoom did, Zotob did take out systems at media outlets, including CNN, prompting widespread publicity.