Love Bug Thoughts
By Emil Guillermo

When one says Filipino hacker the image of the old dictator Ferdinand Marcos comes to mind. Can you see it? The curmudgeonly Marcos revving up his back swing, teeing it up at the Philippine golf course called “wack-wack.”

Now that’s a Filipino hacker.

But now we’ve got a whole new ball game.

The new Filipino hacker is the perpetrator of the “Love Bug.” And while, sure, the late Mr. Marcos was said to have had a dalliance or two, he was never as virile as this little cyber sucker.

If you’ve been hit by the “Love Bug” virus, my condolences. Viruses are the last thing you need when there’s already too much work to do because, of course, the computer has made us all so-ooooo productive. Add “fix virus problem” to your list of things to do with all that leisure time you have on our hands.

Of course, if you owned a Mac you’d have been safe—just one perk of having a computer that’s compatible with no one. Unfortunately, all PC users were susceptible to this Filipino bug. Even I had a touch of it.

Authorities have now identified the suspected hackers as members of an underground computer group called GRAMMARSoft based in Manila. Officials initially fingered a bank employee, Reomel Ramones, but later released him for lack of evidence. For now.

That however was not as interesting as Ramones’ suspected co-conspirator. Ramones lived in a Manila apartment with his girl friend, Irene de Guzman, a recent graduate from the AMA Computer College in Manila. That alone was worth a headline.

To paraphrase Sinatra, “The Lady was a NERD.”

You must realize there aren’t that many female nerds. Hackdom is generally a boy’s club. And even women’s groups are beginning to address the issue of getting girls to discover the nerd within, that painstakingly detailed and boring cyber-soul in us all. When hackers saw that de Guzman was female, they probably wanted her e-mail address to send love letters. She’s a bonafide cyber celebrity, this Irene de Guzman.

Apparently the cyber gene runs in the family. Police are now also boldly pointing the finger at de Guzman’s brother, Onel. That’s One L. He lived with the couple, is a current student at AMA and connected to Michael Buen, another suspect considered to be a key member of the GRAMMARSoft group.

What a bright group of young Filipinos.

Should we throw the book at these bastards? That would be one light book. The Philippines doesn’t even have a law against what the hackers are suspected of doing.

I must say, though, after a modest amount of teeth gnashing, I’ve taken a different view of the suspects.

I mean what did they allegedly do but make everyone realize the enormous power of cyber-terror internationally?

Pakistan has the bomb? Irene has massive RAM. Who’s likely to use their power first? Pakistan can test. But a bomb’s for posturing. You can use your RAM anytime.

But let’s not pick on Pakistan. Take any extremist group that’s used to guns and bombs. When everything is going from brick and mortar to click and mortar, why can’t real terrorists?

They’re probably still reading the manuals. Which brings us back to our brilliant, but somewhat malevolent Filipino students. Who would you rather have test out such a virus? Some third-world wacko? Or some naughty third-world students?

For all the grief they’re suspected of wreaking, the virus was relatively simple and left huge cyber-footprints that led authorities to the phone line used to access the Internet.

Not too smart.

But not too dumb.

The virus made all the Fortune 500 companies and a few countries like Britain and New Zealand consider just how insecure their systems really were. Companies rarely do anything before it affects the bottom line. The corporate world doesn’t have that kind of insight. They need a ledger. And they need to see red ink. Lots of it. After $10-15 billion dollars of estimated losses, and worldwide media attention, do you think some IT managers at major firms got the message?

This is a major service.

And there were no hostages. Except your e-mail server.

My fellow Filipino Americans were mostly filled with dread. It’s not always that anything Filipino makes it to the front-page. The recent Muslim hostage situation has made it to the back-page of American newspapers—in the agate-type single paragraphs where they place the foreign news. But the front-page? Save it for a volcano maybe. Another Pinatubo. A good lava flow. Some tragedy or act of God. But an act of a Filipino?

One Filipino American e-mailed me speculating on the “the extent of the damage on the Filipino psyche and the negative impact of this Philippine made weapon of mass electronic destruction.”

Whoa. My computer’s more hurt than my psyche.

Beyond the corporate, the students also exposed the world to a more realistic look at the so-called digital divide. A Washington Post reporter described the apartment of the de Guzmans, the launching place of the virus as a “messy apartment, located next to a fetid canal in a lower middle-class Manila neighborhood where most people do not own computers or use the World Wide Web.” It’s a third-world perspective that USA-centric folks better not ignore.

So here’s to the students. Let’s not crucify them. But let’s not glorify them either. The Philippines should make these folks run some new Department of Cyber-terror. For free.

And as for Irene de Guzman, maybe we can now finally put to rest all those jokes about Imelda’s 3000 shoes. I want to know the size of de Guzman’s hard drive.