Farid Essebar is a Moroccan hacker and a Russian citizen who was born on 1987. He was one of the two people (along with Turkish Atilla Ekici) behind the spread of the Zotob computer worm that targeted Windows 2000 operating systems in 2005. Among the companies that were affected by the worm were CNN, ABC News, New York Times, Caterpillar, United Parcel Service, Boeing and also United States Department of Homeland Security. He was the original author of Zotob, a computer worm which exploits security vulnerabilities in Microsoft operating systems like Windows 2000, including the MS05-039 plug-and-play vulnerability. This worm has been known to spread on Microsoft-ds or TCP port 445.