'Love Bug' prime suspect

MANILA, MAY 10. Officials of a Philippine computer college today identified a student who wrote a software program which closely resembles the ``Iloveyou'' computer virus that disabled e-mail systems worldwide.

The student, Onel De Guzman (in picture), is now missing. He lives in the same apartment as Reonel Ramones, a bank employee who was arrested on Monday on suspicion of involvement with the virus, but was later released because of lack of evidence.

The software program, written as a thesis project at the Ama Computer College in Manila, was rejected on Feb 24, with a thesis reviewer at the school noting, ``this is illegal'' and ``we do not produce burglars.''

In the proposal, De Guzman wrote the software ``will be helpful to a lot of people, especially Internet users, to get windows passwords such as Internet accounts to spend more time on Internet without paying.''

``We spend lots of money to pay (for Internet) accounts for only using a couple of hours,'' he wrote. ``So this program is the main solution. Use it to steal and retrieve Internet accounts of the victim's computer.''

Onel's sister, Irene De Guzman, is Ramones' girlfriend and is also being sought by investigators for questioning.

State prosecutors on Tuesday ordered the release of 27-year-old Ramones.

Meanwhile, Philippine investigators today said the ``Love Bug'' virus could have started as a prank by hackers who did not foresee the consequences.

The Philippine National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) said, ``They (the suspects) did not know it was criminal, perhaps it was just a prank.'' ``But it was deliberate on their part, what they did not expect is the damage it would cause.''

- AP, Reuters

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