"Goner" suspects under house arrest in Israel

Steven Scheer

JERUSALEM: Four Israeli teenagers were placed under house arrest on Monday

after admitting they wrote and spread the "Goner" worm that wreaked

havoc on computers worldwide, police said.

Tel Aviv's juvenile court accepted a police request to confine the youths,

aged 15 and 16, to their houses pending five days of investigation, said Meir

Zohar, head of the Israeli police computer crimes squad.

The virus deleted files and clogged e-mail inboxes around the world,

appearing as an e-mail message with the subject "Hi" and a screensaver

attachment. Officials said North America, Australia and western Europe were

hardest hit.

The youths, from the same school in the northern Israeli city of Nahariya,

had never been arrested before, Zohar said. One teenager admitted to writing the

worm, while the other three confessed to spreading it, Zohar added.

Lawyers for the youths were not immediately available for comment.

"They are not bandits, they are regular kids. They are not computer

geniuses, although one of them could write a program," Zohar told Reuters.

"I don't think they fully understood what they were doing."

Security experts called for stern punishment of the teens, insisting the

damage went beyond a children's prank.

Under Israeli law, creating and spreading computer viruses is a crime

punishable with a maximum jail sentence of five years. But for juveniles -- the

majority of those who send viruses -- maximum jail time is only 2-1/2 years.

Police acted on a tip from Israeli intelligence officials before arresting

the youths late last week. Police searched their homes and confiscated computers

and other material, Zohar said. "After five days they will be released

unless we find something," he said, adding that their admissions of writing

and spreading the virus might not be enough.

Early predictions put Goner in a league with last year's infamous "Love

Bug", which experts say caused $8.75 billion of damage worldwide. By late

last week Goner was expected to inflict about $5 million in damages.

Zohar said the suspects told investigators that Goner was supposed to be an

updated version of the fast-spreading 1999 "Melissa" e-mail virus,

which caused about $1.2 billion in damage.

(C) Reuters Limited.