Belgian Female Teen Hacker Breaks Molds

Police reportedly released the woman after 24 hours, confiscated her five computers
and shut down her Web site. She was arrested Monday in her home town of Mechelen,
30 kilometres north of Brussels.

"She was preparing to publish new viruses on this site," Inspector
Olivier Bogaert of the Belgium police was quoted as telling La Libre Belgique.

The Computer Crimes Unit inspector said Gigabyte was an extremely talented student. "I
told her it was a pity that she did not put her skills to a more positive use," he
told the paper.

Her youth and gender helped gain Gigabyte notoriety in the male-dominated world
of computer hackers. In a 2002 interview carried on the Web site www.techtv.com,
Gigabyte defended her work, saying she herself never spread the viruses she created
and published on her Web site.

"When people make guns, can you blame them when somebody else kills with
them?" she was quoted asking. "I only write them. I don’t release them."

According to TechTV, Gigabyte began writing programs when she was just 6-years-old,
created her first computer worm at 14 and before turning 18 became only the second
person to write a virus in C-sharp, the language of Microsoft’s .Net platform.

from the AP