As many as 10 people with links to a Manila college may have been involved in introducing the Love Bug which crippled e-mail systems last week when it raced round the world from the Philippines capital, investigators said last night. Whether any will be prosecuted is still very much in doubt. Prosecutors yesterday said police did not have enough evidence to hold the prime suspect, Mr Reonel Ramones (27), a bank clerk. He was arrested by the Philippine National Bureau of Investigation on Monday and preliminarily charged with violating the Access Devices Regulation Act, which mainly deals with passwords for credit cards. Computer hacking is not a crime in the Philippines and the NBI has been looking frantically for ways to punish the alleged creators of the most virulent computer bug ever to paralyse electronic communications.~
Mr Ramones and his girlfriend, Ms Irene de Guzman (23), for whom an arrest warrant was issued, both attended courses at the AMA Computer College (AMACC) in Manila. Senior NBI officer Mr Elfren Meneses told reporters that around eight other people with links to the college could be involved in the spread of the Love Bug and variants, which have caused damage and lost work hours amounting to between $5 billion-$10 billion dollars, the US firm, Computer Economics, estimates.
Mr Meneses said 10 coded names were found embedded in the virus and that the Federal Bureau of Investigation in Washington had ascertained that the pseudonyms came from an organisation called AMACC. Mr Meneses said the college promised to help investigations.
Although Mr Ramones has been set free, he will have to appear in court on May 19th to answer preliminary charges, based on a complaint by an Internet services provider, that the virus originated in the flat where the couple lived. The virus, disguised as a friendly e-mail attachment to a message with the caption "I LOVE YOU" replicated as it was opened on Microsoft software such as Outlook Express. It erased data including photo (.jpg) and music (MP3) files.
It was followed in different countries by mutant forms with messages such as Mother's Day Order Confirmation. The Love Bug was first discovered in the files on an Internet service provider in Quezon in the Philippines last Thursday. The eight pages of computer code it contained included the word "Barok", which first led investigators to the Philippines: this was the name of a programme invented by a Filipino hacker last year to steal code words.
Senior Philippines prosecutor Mr Severino Gana told reporters after an inquest on the NBI's findings that the evidence was incomplete and they had yet to evaluate discs taken from the couple's flat. Mr Ramones told authorities that he was a victim of "mistaken identity" but did not elaborate. A lawyer for Ms de Guzman said that "definitely she has nothing to do with it".
The latest variants on the virus include tainted messages with subject lines such as "Dangerous Virus Warning"; "Virus ALERT; How To Protect Yourself From The ILOVEYOU Bug"; and "Thank You For Flying With Arab Airlines".