Hacker 'Gigabyte' angered by stereotypes

Teenage Belgian hacker Gigabyte has answered comments made by Sophos anti-virus expert Graham Cluley, who yesterday hit back at a .exe piece of malware she wrote which ends up depicting him being hit by coconuts at a fairground.

Cluley has said Gigabyte, who has advanced skills in Microsoft's C# language and is believed to be a computer studies student, is upset with him because she has mistakenly taken some of his comments as sexist.

Gigabyte told silicon.com in an email that she had been misquoted in past articles and said: "Actually, yes, his sexistic [sic] comments *are* a reason why I don't like Clueless [sic] but that's not everything.

"Except for that, he also continues talking shit about virus writers in general, saying we're pizza-addicted, sex-starved, ugly teens who never get outside. It's always the same yet, I think, fairly unrealistic."

She goes on to say that Cluley has had "several arguments on alt.comp.virus with VXers, about VXers" and that "if anyone has an obsession here it's him".

However, Cluley was in defiant mood when he heard Gigabyte's reaction.

"I've never talked about them being pizza-addicted," he said. "Of the virus writers I've encountered they've certainly given the impression they have some growing up to do."

He added: "If I'm guilty of being obsessed about anything it's making the net a safer place. We feel we're contributing something. What's she doing?"

Gigabyte finished off her response by wondering why there is such a hacker stereotype. She blamed the media, putting it down to "some hacker movie probably".