Virus Update: Love Bug author will be easy to find, says ex-hacker

According to his source code, he "hates to go to school", but Spyder, the virus writer guilty of releasing the "Love Bug" virus, may find it harder to face up to life in prison.

According to ex-hacker Mathew Bevan, better known as Kuji the 21-year-old who was caught by Scotland Yard for breaking into the Pentagon's computers, the virus writer shouldn't be too difficult to trace.

"I'm sure they'll get him," said Bevan. "He'll probably want to tell everybody about it. If it's true that he's based in Manila and they have his email address, then they have a starting point."

According to Bevan, anti-virus vendors are not doing enough to protect customers. "People are getting stung every time. Anti-virus software relies on signature scanning that looks for matches in the email header and first few lines of code. It's easy to change that slightly and re-release it."

"This virus would be very easy to modify," he added.

Content scanning, Bevan added, where the full code of the email and any attachment is checked, would be much more secure.