Atilla Ekici

Atilla Ekici (also known as "Coder" and "sefo") is a Turkish black-hat hacker who is accused to have helped Moroccan black-hat hacker Farid Essebar in developing the Zotob worm. He also had connections with the Mytob worm and a third worm, RBot. Assistant FBI Director Louis Reigel, who heads the Cyber Division, said investigators believe Essebar was the author of the codes and sold them to Ekici for financial gain. He said investigators had not determined what other financial crimes may be involved, but said there was not yet evidence of planned identity theft, bank fraud or forgery.

Authorities said they did not yet know how much Essebar had profited, nor did they yet have any estimate of financial damage caused by the attacks.

Officials said neither suspect was on any watch list, suggesting no political motivation for the computer attacks.