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MANILA (AFP) - A young Filipino couple and a babysitter living in decaying tenement housing are the unlikely suspects in the deadliest and most expensive virus attack in Internet history.
NBI sources said Ramones' 25-year-old wife Irene de Guzman was picked up at her work in another local bank while her sister, babysitter Jocelyn de Guzman, 23, was also detained four days after the global outbreak of the "ILOVEYOU" virus. Little is known about the three Filipino suspects, and less about the extent of the hacker culture in the Philippines, where the Internet is just starting to take off.
Neighbors said Ramones kept to himself inside the couple's tiny apartment unit. But police authorities said the apartment on Zamora Street in the rundown neighborhood of Pandacan was stacked with diskettes, computer magazines and four telephone sets. Four telephones are a rarity in most Filipino homes, where the backlog of landline applicants stretches out to the tens of thousands.
The press staked out the apartment unit all afternoon, but the agents gave them the slip by using a backdoor exit. Ramones, a smallish man wearing a white T-shirt and blue jeans who used a bag to shield his face from cameras, was hustled into a room at the NBI moments after he was driven into the bureau's building.
AMA Computer College, one of several specialist schools in the early days of the computer revolution in the Philippines, said Monday that one alumnus and one current student were under police investigation in connection with the virus.
The school's Vice President Manuel Abad, who did not identify the suspects, said the hacker or hackers appeared to have used a relatively simple programming language called "visual basic" in creating the virus that infected at least 10 million computers worldwide.
AMA Computer said in a statement that it was committed to "cooperate with all the investigating bodies and shall make available its resources to assist in the efforts." The school "does not tolerate acts similar to this hacking incident," and "will never condone any act which will result in the improper use of information technology to the detriment of society," it said.
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