Female Arrested!!

News:

19-year-old female virus-writer who goes by the name of "Gigabyte" was arrested Monday, disaffirming the stereotype that hackers are male. According to TechTV, Gigabyte began writing programs when she was just 6-years-old, created her first computer worm at 14 and before turning 18 became only the second person to write a virus in C-sharp, the language of Microsoft's .Net platform. Wow!

Belgian police arrested a 19-year-old female technology student who gained international notoriety for creating computer viruses, local news media reported Saturday. The woman, identified only by her nickname "Gigabyte," was charged with computer data sabotage under legislation introduced in 2000 to deal with cyber-crime, the daily La Libre Belgique reported. If convicted, she faces up to three years in prison and fines of up to euro 100,000 (US$127,000).

Police reportedly released the woman after 24 hours, confiscated her five computers and shut down her Web site. She was arrested Monday in her hometown of Mechelen, 30 kilometers (20 miles) north of Brussels. "She was preparing to publish new viruses on this site," Inspector Olivier Bogaert of the Belgium police was quoted as telling La Libre Belgique.

The Computer Crimes Unit inspector said Gigabyte was an extremely talented student. "I told her it was a pity that she did not put her skills to a more positive use," he told the paper. Her youth and gender helped gain Gigabyte notoriety in the male-dominated world of computer hackers.

[wassim_]

I think I'm in love!!!

Viva la republique.

[Jay]

a virus-writer

I agree with Jay...

Yes, female coders are rare, and more appealing for that reason, but..

She was writing viruses. Fuck that, she deserves whatever punishment she gets.

Regards

[MaRKuS-DJM]

i agree with Jay and Satyric0n. i hate viruses.

lets say so:

PC VIRUSes are STUPIDITY TESTs of:
1.YOU
2.M$

[Jay]

PC VIRUSes are STUPIDITY TESTs of:
1.YOU
2.M$

barHalona, its where the bulls are?

[JMI]

While it is somewhat contradictory for those of us engaged in Reverse Engineering to attempt to claim a superior moral position on all things related to this subject, very few of us can be said to be actively engaged in seeking out and intentionally damaging other people's computer systems, data, or ability to communicate.

Those who act out of deliberate malice and with destructive intent deserve the severe punishment they recieve. Many American Indian peoples used to demonstrate their superior skills at fighting by "count coup" or simply "toughing" their "enemy" with a stick used for that purpose.

I would have no problem with a skilled "hacker" who was satisfied with simply gaining entry on another system and "counting coup" with some form of a pop message that advised of the success of their effort, without damaging the system or hijacking it for some other destructive purpose.

Eval is correct, however that viruii are, in many ways made possible through the arrogance of M$ and their bloated code, although people were "hacking" into, and do still hack into machines without M$ systems. His second point is also correct, that many make the work of hackers far to easy by failing to take even the most basic precautions. Those folks have to share much of the responsibility for the success of the virii distributors, but their fault would still be only ignorance or laziness, not malice.

Regards,

My SORRYes for my LINEAR post;
there i just tried to by SHORT-EST in words.
(yah, wrong attitude)

Sorry, because LAMERS!
Because to be a Lamer, not means to be stupid.

& many lamers are damaged from virii.
Here virii sux!

fuck this wh0re..

i hate virus authors what publish own work to public

..and talk about m$? nah..stupid childs..

[Eleven]

female coders are rare

They aren't as rare as you'd think. The fact is, the only reason female coders (or tech enthusisasts even) seem rare is because most people assume that all coders are male. The rise in idiots impersonating females over the internet hasn't helped sway popular opinion.

On the internet, theres little to no way of knowing the sex of a person, and a lot of tech-oriented females tend to not draw attention to their gender online (re: <dr. cool> OMG YOU ARE A GIRL? [private] <dr. cool> CYBER?). The last programming job i was hired to do had as many female coders and support staff as males, and a deal of them were in direction and managerial positions.

I'm not sure about everywhere else, but it looks to me that the women of technology today have a much greater chance of taking the place of a male as compared with 5, maybe even less years ago.

As for her arrest for virus making, what exactly did she make?

before turning 18 became only the second person to write a virus in C-sharp, the language of Microsoft's .Net platform

People don't make viruses in .net languages because it requires the .net interpreter that more people don't have than do have. Its a moot point saying that she was the second to ever make one in c#, as in the real world the virus would be virtually useless.

I'm not defending virus writers here, but i think there are differences between each writer's intentions. Just because a virus can be malicious doesn't mean the writer intended to do damage. It sounds to me like the viruses she wrote were demonstrations rather than malicious acts. If she's convicted, it'll be a dark day.

Hi eleven,

"She was preparing to publish new viruses on this site," Inspector Olivier Bogaert of the Belgium police was quoted as telling La Libre Belgique.

Why share such malicious codes with everyone by posting them on her website. She should have demonstarted her excellence in coding with the Computer Crime Unit if her intentions were good. They would have employed her for her amazing skills.

Let me tell you an incident which took place in my locality. There was a cybercafe, offcourse its sealed by the police, and the owner was an extremely intelligent chap. He had the guts to hack the POLICE website , obviously got caught. The next day he made headlines in local newspapers. He was portrayed as cyber criminal by news reporters with all abuses. The most wise thing he did was that he didn't deface the website just gained entry. After a few days there was a report that he has been employed by the cyber crime detection cell for his brilliant computing skills.

Moral of the story: If you got computing skills and still not getting a job then do ETHICAL hacking

BTW the above incident is not a makeup...it's true

h**p://www.google.be/search?q=cache:tyeHyulKbNcJ:coderz.net/gigabyte/+gigabyte+virus&hl=nl&ie=UTF-8

[Eleven]

Why share such malicious codes with everyone by posting them on her website. She should have demonstarted her excellence in coding with the Computer Crime Unit if her intentions were good. They would have employed her for her amazing skills.

Before i'd read Gigabytes webpage, i'd have said that writing a virus and putting it on a webpage is doing as much harm as writing a tutorial for breaking software protection, especially if the virus was written in such an obscure language that it would infect 1 in every 10000 people that actually came into contact with it.

Though her site does seem to be more exhibitionist than malicious (c#, tcl viruses, other obscurities), there are viruses that she has there that she put there for the sole purpose of doing damage.

Problem with the case at hand is that she didn't infect anybody with it, she put it up for people to do whatever they want with it. The 'selling a knife doesn't imply responsibility for someone killing a person with it' defence will probably keep her out of jail, but i'd guess theres be some minor punishment incurred from it.

Also, your story is hard to believe. A cybercrime unit hiring a criminal who hacked the cybercrime unit doesn't sound like an obvious (or intelligent) thing to do.