Virus writers get behind Gigabyte

The virus-writing community made something of an about-turn last week as an increasing number of authors gave their support to female virus writer, Gigabyte.

Previously the teenage coder had been lambasted by male members of the community for her creation of the Sharp virus that attacks Microsoft's .Net platform.

Eighteen-year-old high school student Gigabyte created the second virus to affect the .Net platform in March. Although the code was only proof of concept and not released into the open, Gigabyte managed to attract less-than-welcome attention from some of the more sexist members of the virus-writing community.

But Steven Sundermeier, of antivirus firm Central Command, said that in recent weeks he had seen more virus coders praising Gigabyte.

"We have seen an increasing trend of virus authors praising and giving their support to Gigabyte, whether in a message box or remarked in the code," he said.

Recent examples of such commendation include the ChatIRC virus that spreads over Internet Relay Chat (IRC) and includes the remark: "I love viruses, I love Gigabyte!" in its code, and the Orkiz mass mailing worm, which displays a message in Spanish proclaiming admiration for Gigabyte.

Gigabyte's Sharp virus was the second of its kind to infect .Net files. A writer going by the name of Benny from virus group 29A got there first with the Donut virus in January.