Sunday, 7 May, 2000, 16:00 GMT 17:00 UK
Love Bug suspect 'a woman'
The virus has been traced back to the Phillipines
The person behind the devastating Love Bug computer virus has been identified
as a woman, but police fear she may have destroyed key evidence.
Philippines police said investigators had identified the suspect but it could
take a while to make an arrest because they did not have an arrest warrant.
Tackling the virus
Do not open it
Delete it using shift del
As with all e-mails, if in doubt do not run any attachments you are not
expecting
If you have run the attachment, log out, switch off and phone your help desk
or seek expert advice
They had previously believed the culprit to be a 23-year-old man. But they
now said they were looking for a young female computer school student from a
middle-class family.
"With all the publicity in the last three days, we fear that she has
destroyed by now all evidence that could link her to the hacking," said an
official.
Traced to Philippines
The FBI and Interpol have been helping in the hunt for the lone programmer
who invented the virus. They tracked the virus to the Philippines through an
electronic trail left by the rogue e-mails.
But officials in Manila have raised the possibility that the suspect might
not be responsible for the computer attack.
Bjoerck: Programmer is a German
"It was only the computer used to launch the virus that was traced but
anybody could use that computer," said an official.
"The user here is invisible, it could be anybody. The difference is that the
person we have identified is the registered owner of that computer."
And Swedish researcher Fredrik Bjoerck, who helped find the creator of the
Melissa virus, said traces on the internet pointed to a German exchange
student living in Australia.
Copycat alert
The virus caused a flood of e-mails with the alluring subject line ILOVEYOU
to course through computer systems in more than 20 countries on Thursday.
Several variations appeared soon after, one masquerading as an e-mail joke,
another as a receipt for a Mother's Day gift.
Worldwide infection
3.1 million files worldwide
2.5m in North America
325,000 in Europe
129,000 in Asia
25,500 in Australia and New Zealand
Source: Trend Micro Inc
Anti-virus software maker Symantec said the latest variant of the virus poses
as a warning message from their technical support team. Infected e-mails have
the subject line Virus ALERT! and should be deleted.
Experts say the virus is likely to engender more variants in the coming
weeks.
E-mails infected with the Love Bug reached 45 million users, according to one
estimate.
It only affects systems running Microsoft Windows with Windows Scripting Host
enabled. Computers using Apple's operating system or Linux are not affected.
Estimates of the worldwide damage from the virus range from hundreds of
millions of dollars to $10bn, mostly in lost work time.
Although the virus seems to have started in the Philippines, systems there
and in much of Asia have escaped largely unscathed as several markets were on
holiday last week.
The full extent of the virus will likely become clearer on Monday.
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