Computer Addicts, Cyberthieves, Computer Geniuses or Simply Hackers?

ONEL DE GUZMAN linked to “I LOVE YOU VIRUS”

How and where did the virus originate?

It is believed that the virus originate in the Philippines particularly in Manila. “When the FBI traced the Love Bug virus to a student in Manila in 2000, he was not prosecuted because the Philippines had no laws against spreading computer viruses(http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/technology/2003-09-01-blaster-cover_x.htm).”

Who was responsible for creating and distributing it?

Onel de Guzman, a student in AMA Computer College in Manila was traced to be the author of the I Love You virus.

How does it work?

This is how I LOVE YOU virus works as detailed in CNET News posted May 4, 2000.Quoted from the same source(http://money.cnn.com/2000/05/05/technology/loveyou/):
In an analysis provided by Security Focus, Elias Levy explained that the I Love You virus replicates in three different ways: through email attachments, Internet Relay Chat file transfers, and through shared drives on a computer network.
Once the virus has found its way in, it writes itself into three different locations: two under the Windows directory, one under the system directory.
Then it modifies the computer’s registry keys, which normally contain configuration information that tells the computer what programs to launch on start-up. The worm modifies the registry so that it starts running when the computer is restarted.
In a step now rendered impotent, the worm modifies the registry key that determines the start page for Microsoft?s Internet Explorer browser, pointing to one of four Web pages hosted by Sky Internet.
Those four pages linked to an executable called “win-bugsfix.exe.” Virus code made the executable run.
The executable then looked up the computer’s dial-up connection passwords, and mailed them to an email address in the Philippines.
Next, the executable created an HTML file on the computer’s hard drive to infect other computers connected on IRC. Giving it great and speedy virulence, it next spread to everyone listed in the victim’s Windows address book.
In one of the most malicious aspects of the virus, it then went on to overwrite various music and graphics files and rename them .vbs files.

How much monetary damage it caused around the world?
From http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/technology/2003-09-01-blaster-cover_x.htm posted Sept. 2, 2003
From the chart below, I LOVE YOU virus caused an estimated damage of 10 billion dollars. It posed the biggest monetary damage compared to other viruses and worms created from 1999 to 2003.
Worms, viruses prove costly.
The estimated cleanup and lost productivity costs of worms and viruses add up:
Year Virus/worm Estimated damage
1999 Melissa virus $80 million
2000 Love Bug virus $10 billion
2001 Code Red I and II worms $2.6 billion
2001 Nimda virus $590 million to $2 billion
2002 Klez worm $9 billion
2003 Slammer worm $1 billion
Source: USA TODAY research

Were there any prosecutions?

There are no prosecutions done for the author of I LOVE YOU virus. As quoted from a news in USA Today posted September 2 , 2003,
“When the FBI traced the Love Bug virus to a student in Manila in 2000, he was not prosecuted because the Philippines had no laws against spreading computer viruses (http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/technology/2003-09-01-blaster-cover_x.htm).”
“The Philippine authorities filed theft and other charges against Mr. de Guzman, but dropped them in August because of insufficient evidence. The case against him was weakened because at the time, the Philippines did not have laws governing computer espionage(http://www.nytimes.com/2000/10/21/business/a-filipino-linked-to-love-bug-talks-about-his-license-to-hack.html ).

References:
Festa,P and Wilcox, J.(2000).CNN News. Philippine Cooperating with FBI in virus probe Retrieved May 10, 2009 from http://money.cnn.com/2000/05/05/technology/loveyou/ Posted May 4, 2000
Swartz, J.(2003). USA TODAY.Cops take a bite, or maybe a nibble, out of cybercrime Retrieved May 10, 2009 from http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/technology/2003-09-01-blaster-cover_x.htm Posted Sept. 2, 2003
Landler, M. (2000). The New York Times.A Filipino Linked to ‘Love Bug’ Talks About His License to Hack. Posted Oct. 21, 2000 Retrived May 21, 2009 from http://www.nytimes.com/2000/10/21/business/a-filipino-linked-to-love-bug-talks-about-his-license-to-hack.html

KEVIN MITNICK

Kevin Mitnick is a brilliant cyberthief. He has several cases varying from phone phreaking to stealing of software and operating systems. He is considered a computer addict.
In 1981,Mitnick with his two friends entered the Pacific Bell’s COSMOS phone center in downtown Los Angeles. COSMOS, or Computer System for Mainframe Operations, was a database used by many of the nation’s phone companies for controlling the phone system’s basic recordkeeping functions. They took lists of computer passwords, including the combinations to the door locks at nine Pacific Bell central offices and a series of operating manuals for the COSMOS system..
His next arrest was in 1983 by campus police at the University of Southern California, where he had gotten into minor trouble a few years earlier, when he was caught using a university computer to gain illegal access to the ARPAnet. This time he was discovered sitting at a computer in a campus terminal room, breaking into a Pentagon computer over the ARPAnet, and was sentenced to six months at the California Youth Authority’s Karl Holton Training School, a juvenile prison in Stockton, California.
In 1987, his use of illegal telephone credit card numbers led police investigators to the apartment he was sharing with his girlfriend in Thousand Oaks, California. He was convicted of stealing software from the Santa Cruz Operation, a California software company, and in December 1987, he was sentenced to 36 months probation.
In 1987 and 1988, Kevin and a friend, Lenny DiCicco, fought a pitched electronic battle against scientists at Digital Equipment’s Palo Alto research laboratory. Mitnick had become obsessed with obtaining a copy of Digital’s VMS minicomputer operating system, and was trying to do so by gaining entry to the company’s corporate computer network, known as Easynet. DEC claimed that he had stolen software worth several million dollars, and had cost DEC almost $200,000 in time spent trying to keep him out of their computers, Kevin pleaded guilty to one count of computer fraud and one count of possessing illegal long-distance access codes. He agreed to one year in prison and six months in a counseling program for his computer “addiction.”
Reference:
http://www.takedown.com/bio/mitnick.html Retrieved May 10, 2009

RAPHAEL GRAY

In March 2000, Gray from Wales was arrested for allegedly hacking into e-commerce Web sites managed to get credit card details on Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates and more than 26,000 other accounts from sites in the U.S., Canada, Thailand, Japan and Britain(http://articles.latimes.com/keyword/raphael-gray). It was alledgely accounted to 3 million dollars credit card fraud.
In 2001, Gray faced 10 charges under the Computer Misuse Act (Section 2) of downloading unauthorised information. He ended up pleaded guilty to six charges of unlawfully gaining access to corporate websites.
References:
Los Angeles Times(2000). Bill Gates among Victims of Hackers posted Mar. 26,2000 Retrieved May 6, 2009 from http://articles.latimes.com/keyword/raphael-gray
BBC News(2001). Teenage hacker admits website charges posted Mar. 28,2001 Retrieved May 6,2009 from http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/1248136.stm

MASTER OF DECEPTION

Masters of Deception (MOD) was a New York-based hacker group. MOD successfully controlled all the major telephone RBOC’s and X.25 networks as well as controlling large parts of the backbone of the rapidly emerging Internet. MOD’s initial membership grew from meetings on Loop-Around Test Lines that led to legendary collaborations to hack RBOC phone switches and the various minicomputers and mainframes used to administer the telephone network. Acid Phreak founded the Masters of Deception with Scorpion and HAC.
As a result of a major nationwide investigation by a joint FBI/Secret Service task force, five of MOD’s members were indicted in 1992 in federal court. Within the next six months (in 1993), all five pleaded guilty and were sentenced to either probation or prison.
Reference:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masters_of_Deception Retrived May 2009

LEGION OF DOOM

The Legion of Doom (LOD) was a very influential hacker group that was active from the 1980s to the late 1990s and early 2000. Their name appears to be a reference to the main antagonists of Challenge of the Superfriends.
LOD was founded by the hacker Lex Luthor, after a rift with his previous group the Knights of Shadow (much as the Masters of Deception ).
LOD published the Legion of Doom Technical Journals and regularly contributed to the overall pool of hacking knowledge and information. LOD caused no harm to phone systems and computer networks but some of its members did.
Many LOD members were raided, charged and in some cases successfully prosecuted for causing damage to systems and reprogramming phone company computers (Grant, Darden and Riggs, etc). While the “Bellsouth” case could be construed as exploration of the phone system, with claims that no real damage was done, there are other former LOD members such as Corey A. Lindsly (a.k.a. Mark Tabas) who were clearly interested in for-profit computer crime, with no goal except personal gain.
Reference:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legion_of_Doom_(hacking) Retrieved May 6, 2009