Swedish Hacker-Tracker Is FBI And Media Darling

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http://news.excite.com/news/r/000610/22/net-sweden-computer-dc

Updated 10:26 PM ET June 10, 2000
By Eva Sohlman

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - The FBI, desperate to track down the source of
the "Love Bug" computer virus last month, turned to a shy 19-year-old
Swedish student.

Jonathan James came under the media spotlight after he helped the
world's most famous crime-busting agency trace the origins of the
virus that caused billions of dollars in damage to computers around
the world.

But right now he is more interested in getting through his school
exams and enrolling in law school later this year.

In recent weeks more than 150 foreign journalists have called James or
traveled to his home -- a country cottage a short distance outside the
university town of Uppsala -- to get his story.

James is unfazed by the media attention. He is concentrating on
finishing his school exams this month and is setting up a joint
venture for computer security solutions.

The journalists are not the only ones to court James.

The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) calls him several times
a week to discuss security issues and ways of tracing computer
hackers.

The first time they contacted him, he said, was when he had tracked
down the creator of the "Melissa" virus in 1999 -- something the FBI
still have not acknowledged officially.

"Well, I suppose it's hard to admit someone else did their job," James
told Reuters.

He recalled how they seemed to expect him to be honored by their call
and spoke to him condescendingly. "But I called them by their first
names and that cooled them down."

James says he is not interested in hacking or computer games, and
denied that he was working on a new virus.

With the media frenzy surrounding "Melissa" still fresh in his mind,
he told the FBI he would not help track the "Love Bug" when it emerged
at the beginning of May.

"I had decided that this time they would have to do it on their own
but then I had a few hours left over on the Sunday..., he said.

James decided to try to find out who was behind the virus when another
Swede pointed the finger at a German student.

Within hours he had gathered information on some well-known hackers'
styles of programming and found one which had elements in common with
the "Love Bug."

The next day, the Washington Post, drawing on U.S. officials, reported
James' findings as the most crucial and later in the day a 24-year-old
Philippine computer student who had submitted a thesis describing a
program similar to the virus, was arrested.

The FBI had come to the same conclusion, James says.

The only difference was that it had taken them days.

U.S. security expert Richard M. Smith said many computer experts had
taken part in the virus hunt but that James was the single most
important player.

"Jonathan found extremely important clues and if he hadn't been around
it would have taken some more days to find the guy," Smith said.

INTERNATIONAL TOP-HACKER CAREER NOT ON THE AGENDA

But a career as a professional hacker, working for the world's most
sophisticated intelligence services, does not appeal to James.

"I want to be my own boss and decide myself what I should or shouldn't
do," he said.

He will start law studies at university later this year.

"I've wanted to study law since I was nine -- even before I got into
computers -- and I think it could be fruitful to combine it with
computers."

James says he is interested in security programming computers because
it resembles the language studies that fascinate him.

Studies in Greek, German, English and Latin help him to trace the
origins of words -- something he says he enjoys while reading.

The Swedish spy story writer Jan Guillou and American author John
Grisham are his favorite writers.

In the little spare time he has James practices martial arts, listens
to all kinds of music, especially American hip-hop, and hangs out with
his half-English family who have helped him keep his feet firmly on
the ground during the media circus.

He tells of the time a journalist from French television was standing
outside his house at 9.30 in the morning and caught him in his
underwear.

"I was only wearing boxer shorts and there she was. She never wanted
to leave but just sat there on our sofa and left around one o'clock in
the afternoon."

GOVERNMENTS LAX ON SECURITY

James said he could not understand computer crime or why some people
seemed to get a thrill from it.

"It's just vanity that seems to drive those hackers," he said.

He criticized governments for being too lax with security, adding that
he had found a big security hole in the homepage of Sweden's ruling
Social Democrats but it took three weeks before it was sorted out.

He thinks worries about the security of on-line shopping are
over-hyped because it is much harder to obtain credit card numbers
without being traced than most people believe.

On the other hand there is no such thing as a 100 percent safe Web
site, he concluded.



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