A US District Court sentenced the author of a minor variant of the Blaster worm, Jeffrey Lee Parson, to 18 months in prison and 10 months community service. The sentence could have been harsher, the maximum sentence possible was 37 months. In a statement, Parson said: "I am grateful the judge gave a very fair sentence. I feel that the judge understood me. I hope young people can learn from my mistakes, and I am sorry to anyone who got hurt in any way by what I did."
Although the little fish has been caught and punished, the big fish - the person, or people, who wrote the far more successful first version of Blaster - is still free.