BRITISH MAN PLEADS GUILTY AS VIRUS WRITER

[also see: The Sad Tale of Chris Pile's 15 Seconds of Fame]

Finally, after months of delay and postponement, a 26 year old unemployed computer programmer, Chris Pile, pleaded guilty Friday to eleven charges related to computer virus writing. The case at Plymouth Crown Court was the first of its kind in British legal history since passage of the Computer Misuse Act in 1990.

Pile, known as the Black Baron, pleaded guilty to hacking into business computers and planting the computer viruses known as SMEG/Pathogen and SMEG/Queeg. The case followed an investigation by fraud squad officers and experts from Scotland Yard. The eleven charges stemmed from a period between October 1993 and April 1994 when the Black Baron obtained unauthorized access to computer programs and seeded them with viruses he'd written. He also pleaded guilty to one charge of inciting others to plant his viruses. Authorities state that tracing the viruses and repairing damage caused by them cost "well in excess of half a million pounds." Pile was released on bail and the trial adjourned for two months to allow the defence to prepare a pre-sentencing report.

Pile, a Devon man, wrote the SMEG viruses which quickly gained the attention of anti-virus developers worldwide in mid-1994. Due to publicity on the nets and in the computer underground, they were rapidly distributed around the Internet at approximated the same time Pile was arrested in connection with the charges on which he was tried.

In 1993, another English virus writer, Stephen Kapps, was arrested in connection with telephone fraud charges. Kapps was known as the "President of ARCV," or ARCV virus writing group which stood for Association of Really Cruel Viruses. (Apache Warrior)

It is worth noting that in 1992 at the height of the Michelangelo virus scare, few virus writers were easily identified. This is no longer the case. Due to the growth in computer networks and an increasing desire for underground network celebrity, many of the most prominent virus writers in the world live in plain sight.

Australia's Clinton Haines, a student at the University of Queensland, is responsible for writing and putting the Dudley and NoFrills computer viruses into the wild in his country. At various times since 1992, these viruses have infected SunCorp, a large Australian insurance firm; Australian Telecom and the Australian Taxation Office, which is similar to the IRS. Haines has been interviewed at length by the Australian newsmedia.

In America, James Gentile, a teenager living in San Diego, has written a number of viruses, all of which have emerged in the wild. His Satan Bug crashed US Secret Service networks in 1993. Since then another of his creations, known as Natas - Satan spelled backwards - has become one of the most common computer viruses in North America. It has been reported as far south in the hemisphere as Argentina.