Teenage Female Virus Writer Arrested

[Alpine]

A 19 YEAR old Belgian virus writer known to the industry as Gigabyte has been arrested.
The writer was famous for her attacks on Sophos spokesman Graham Cluley.

She even invented a virus called Coconut where you could throw coconuts at him and each time you hit him, one less file on your PC would be infected.

Her spat with Cluley was over his comments on virus writers being pimply teenage boys who lacked social skills.

Gigabyte found Cluley's gender stereotyping offensive and told "Tech Live" in a 2002 interview.

"The world should know there are female virus writers out there. But it's certainly not my motivation for virus writing. I do this for myself, not for the whole world. Other females don't need me to stand up for them. They can do it for themselves."

According to Belgium's La Libre Belgique newspaper, police said Gigabyte was preparing to publish new viruses on her website, which was shut down after her arrest.

Police also reportedly confiscated her five computers Gigabyte's real name has not been released, but the university student has written four low impact visus Quis, Coconut, Sahay, and Sharp, or Sharpei, the first virus written in Microsoft .Net's C# language.

Gigabit attracted the anger of some of the hacker community. One German hacker, known as NeoZiX, claimed that a girl could not have written the Sharp code and that Gigabyte must have replaced the name of a male writer in the source code.

"You're a girl ... the kitchen and the crockery [are] better for you," NeoZiX said.

IT magazine writers were also interested in her relationship with another virus writer called Nostalg1c which was dubbed as a relationship made in Hell.

Belgian police have charged Gigabyte with 11 counts of computer data sabotage under a law written in 2000 to deal with computer crimes. She now faces a three jail term and a hefty fine.

In a statement on its website Sophos security analyst Carole Theriault said: "Being an outspoken female in a male-dominated arena, as well as her strange relationship with my colleague, Graham Cluley, has made her a favourite for the media. The simple fact is that writing and distributing viruses is not cool, and one wonders why such a young and obviously clever girl would flirt with the path of a common criminal."




Source:



http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=14428