Judging by what could be seen through the window of their ground-floor apartment in Manila yesterday, the young couple who lived there, Reomel Ramones and Irene de Guzman, liked to pass the evening strumming a guitar and drinking whisky.
But there was also evidence that in their tiny living room they spent a lot of time online and reading computer magazines. Here one day last week, according to warrants issued for their arrest, the two Filipino bank clerks deposited the "love bug" message on the Internet which wreaked havoc on e-mail servers last week from the House of Commons to the White House.
The apartment had been under surveillance since Saturday, but the NBI was unable to act immediately because computer hacking is not a crime in the Philippines. However, amid scenes of great excitement in the neighbourhood, two dozen plain-clothes agents arrived at the apartment yesterday with search warrants - and a mob of reporters and camera crews in tow. After a 3 1/2-hour search they handcuffed and took away 27-year-old Ramones, who refused to speak to the agents, along with some computer disks, telephone wiring and magazines, leaving behind a guitar, several bottles of Scotch, and scattered clothing in the dilapidated apartment.
Of the computer itself or of 23-year-old Ms de Guzman there was no trace, although officials said she would present herself to authorities by today. The raid came after three days of legal confusion, at the end of which the Philippine investigators finally came up with a piece of legislation under which the suspects could be charged. The warrants said there was reason to believe that equipment in the house had been used in violation of the Access Devices Regulation Act, which governs the use of codes, account numbers and passwords giving access to different types of devices. The law provides for a maximum punishment of 20 years in jail.
Ramones and de Guzman were a quiet, unassuming couple, according to neighbours. "She was nice, she would smile at me when passing, but I hardly ever talked to her," said one woman who describer her as "pretty".
The Philippines National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) said it was also likely further investigation could lead to more arrests, but would not give details. The alleged perpetrators of an act of vandalism, which cost billions of pounds in damage worldwide, were not very clever at hiding their tracks, according to NBI. The flood of malicious codes which shut down networks worldwide was easily traced to their flat in the lower middle-class Bagong Barangay suburb of the Philippines capital.
The hackers not only caused a chain reaction with their "I love you" e-mails. Their bug redirected the victim's browser to a site which downloaded a separate programme that stole passwords and e-mailed them back to the virus author. "If that's the case, they might as well have put their return address on the virus," said one of the investigators.