Philippines Student Says He May Have Accidentally Transmitted Love Bug Virus

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Nando Times

By DIRK BEVERIDGE, Associated Press

MANILA, Philippines (May 11, 2000 3:48 p.m. EDT http://www.nandotimes.com)

Nervous and sweating in the glare of television cameras, a Filipino computer student said Thursday he may have accidentally released the "Love Bug" virus that crippled computer e-mail systems worldwide.

The student, Onel A. de Guzman, who had been missing for several days, would not say whether he had written the "ILOVEYOU" virus.

"It is one of the questions we would rather leave for the future," de Guzman said, speaking in Tagalog. His lawyer, Rolando Quimbo, translated into English.

Investigators said they would like to talk with de Guzman and others, but have not said whether he is suspected of any crime.

De Guzman said he was unsure whether he had sent the virus into cyberspace. But asked whether he might accidentally have done so, de Guzman replied, "It is possible."

De Guzman, 23, also acknowledged that "youthful exuberance" may have contributed to the launch of the virus that within hours became a global e-mail menace that may end up costing governments and corporations billions of dollars.

"He is not really aware that the act imputed to him was done by him," Quimbo told reporters. De Guzman sat at his side, wearing dark glasses and dabbing sweat from his face, which he partially covered with his handkerchief.

De Guzman is one of two students at the Philippines' AMA Computer College who wrote computer programs that have become a focus of the search for the origin of the "ILOVEYOU" virus.

The two are close friends, a school official said today.

The other programmer, Michael Buen, graduated May 5 from AMA in metropolitan Manila, and completed his studies with a thesis that acknowledged de Guzman.

The director of the Philippine National Bureau of Investigation, Federico Opinion, said separately Thursday that authorities want to question de Guzman and Buen as well as nearly a dozen other young computer hackers.

Quimbo said his client has no need to speak to investigators unless formally subpoenaed.

De Guzman is a member of GRAMMERSoft, an underground computer group that wrote and sold thesis projects to other students. De Guzman said there were about nine members of the group - but that Buen was not one of them, a statement contradicting what officials from AMA college had said earlier.

The name GRAMMERSoft appears in the computer code in the Love Bug virus.

De Guzman's thesis project, designed to steal passwords from other computer users, was rejected as a form of high-tech theft, so he did not graduate. School officials have said the two thesis projects could have been combined to create the virus.

A copy of Buen's thesis was obtained today by The Associated Press.

The virus broke out one day before the college held its graduation ceremony, snarling e-mail traffic in major government and corporate computer systems in more than 20 countries.

Asked what he felt about the damage caused by the virus, de Guzman replied, "Nothing."

He said he did not remember where he was on May 4, the day the virus erupted.

De Guzman said he sometimes spent four or five hours daily on the Internet, although he declined to offer any information about the computer he used.

He said he had discussed his thesis with other members of the GRAMMERSoft group, and his lawyer suggested that others many have participated in the writing of the virus.

Pressed by reporters to say whether de Guzman had written the virus, his lawyer replied: "We can go as far as saying that he did prepare the thesis proposal but ... the knowledge of its contents were not limited to Onel."

The speaker of the Philippine House of Representatives called the case an example of misguided genius.

Manuel Villar Jr. said the authors of the virus should have worked equally hard on a legitimate program so they could "get rich and bring recognition to our country," The Philippine Star reported.

It quoted Villar as saying the virus - which stunned experts with the speed at which it spread - shows that the Philippines possesses world-class information technology skills.

De Guzman lives in an apartment with his sister and her boyfriend, Reonel Ramones, a bank worker who was arrested in the case on Monday but then freed the next day because of a lack of evidence.

NBI and FBI officials were still scanning through computer diskettes seized in a raid on the apartment but have declined to comment on whether they have uncovered any useful information.

The FBI has sought to maintain a low profile in the investigation, which has been difficult for Philippine officials because of a lack of equipment, expertise and a scarcity of local laws that apply to computer crime. Many people in the Philippines seem to care little about the virus, which posed few problems in the relatively uncomputerized country but stirred cyber chaos in the wealthy West.

Some estimates have put the worldwide cost of the virus at up to $10 billion, much of that due to lost productivity.

"We're cooperating with the Philippine NBI," said Thomas Skipper, spokesman of the U.S. Embassy. "They have the lead on this."

-- Rachel Gibson (rgibson@hotmail.com), May 11, 2000


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