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The 20-year-old is now subject to criminal procedures after police searched his computer and found images of child porn as well as evidence that such images had been sent via email.

The German Paderborn police said the effect of the Sober worm has additionally 'helped police with the clearing-up of several sexual crimes'.

A slew of Sober variants were sent out in the latter half of November, which

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included messages purporting to come from the FBI, the UK's NHTCU and German authorities.

The messages claimed that the authorities had been monitoring the recipient. Those purporting to be from the FBI claimed 'We have logged your IP-address on more than 30 illegal Websites', while those from the German authorities said that they had already begun 'preliminary investigations'. The virus sends itself in either English of German depending on the domain of the recipient.

The author of the Sober virus is also known to be German, and German authorities recently accurately predicted the launch of a new variant based on evidence from their ongoing investigations. Security firm iDefense also claims to have studied the code of the worm to reveal that a further attack is set up for 6 January 2006.

The press release from the German police is available (in German) here.