Received the following from a friend. Shirley: bobert(a)i-1.net
News of the GONER Virus:
'Goner' Suspects Under House Arrest in Israel --- Four Israeli teenagers
were placed under house arrest on Monday after admitting they wrote and
spread the ``Goner'' worm that wreaked havoc on computers worldwide,
police said.
Tel Aviv's juvenile court accepted a police request to confine the 15-
and 16-year-olds to their houses pending five days of investigation,
said Meir Zohar, head of the Israeli police computer crimes squad.
Under Israeli law, they would face up to 2-1/2 years in prison for a
virus that deleted files and clogged e-mail inboxes around the world,
causing millions of dollars in damage.
``Goner,'' the latest of a series of costly computer viruses to have an
international impact, appeared as an e-mail with the subject line ``Hi''
and a screensaver attachment. Officials said North America, Australia
and western Europe were hardest hit.
The youths, from the same school in the northern city of Nahariya, had
never been arrested before, Zohar said. One admitted to writing the
worm, and the other three confessed to spreading it, with the author's
encouragement, he said.
The teens' lawyers were unavailable for immediate comment.
``They are not bandits, they are regular kids. They are not computer
geniuses, although one of them could write a program,'' Zohar told
Reuters. ``I don't think they fully understood what they were doing.''
Security experts called for stern punishment, insisting the damage went
beyond a children's prank.
``One thing law enforcement could do is...be more proactive, to tell
teenagers, 'This isn't a cool thing. You will be caught and you will be
punished because it does millions of dollars worth of damage to
corporations,''' said Graham Cluley, senior technical consultant for
Britain's Sophos Anti-Virus.
The software community is concerned that the courts will go easy on the
young suspects, as happened with the Love Bug, Melissa and Anna
Kournikova virus suspects.
JAIL Creating and spreading computer viruses is a crime punishable with
a maximum jail sentence of five years under Israeli law. But for
juveniles
-- the majority of those who send viruses -- maximum jail time is only
2-1/2 years.
Police acted on a tip from Israeli intelligence before the arrests late
last week. Police searched their homes and confiscated computers and
other material, Zohar said.
``After five days they will be released unless we find something,'' he
said. Their admissions might not be enough.
Early predictions put Goner in a league with last year's infamous ``Love
Bug,'' which experts say caused $8.75 billion of damage worldwide. But
by late last week Goner was expected to inflict about $5 million in
damages.
Zohar said the suspects told investigators the worm was supposed to be
an update of the fast-spreading 1999 ``Melissa'' e-mail virus, which
caused about $1.2 billion in damage.
Information technology officials want harsher punishment.
Security experts say that most countries do not have virus-authoring
legislation on the books that would be vital for cracking down on the
culprits.
``That's the first step of course,'' said Mikko Hypponen, manager of
anti-virus research at Finland-based F-Secure. ``Once we start to use
these laws, then, I feel genuinely, there is a need for harsh
punishment.'' ``That said, nobody wants to put a kid away for years who
didn't harm anyone physically,'' he noted.
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BUT - I received another HAHAHAHA Virus message this AM. At least, it
deletes easier than the GONER Virus.
Some people need to "Get a Life!"