Sasser virus suspect arrested

German authorities have arrested an 18-year-old man suspected of creating the “Sasser” computer virus, which infected thousands of computers worldwide, an official said today.

The suspect, a high school student, was arrested yesterday and lives near the northern town of Rothenburg an der Wuemme, said Frank Federau, a spokesman for the state criminal office in Hanover.

He did not elaborate or release the man’s identity.

The worm raced around the world over the past week, exploiting a flaw in Microsoft Corp.'s Windows operating system.

Unlike most outbreaks, Sasser does not require users to activate it by clicking on an e-mail attachment. Sasser is known as a network worm because it can automatically scan the Internet for computers with the security flaw and send a copy of itself there.