A police spokesman announced Friday that officers had apprehended a super hacker who turned out to be a fifteen year old high school boy named Kim. To date 152 people have filed complaints about the 15 super viruses Kim created and e-mailed, but police expect the final figure to be over 2,000.
Kim told police that he mailed the viruses to demonstrate his talents and to find out if anyone could develop a 'vaccine' for them. The viruses were so complex that they were virtually impossible to kill. The spokesman said that Kim was known as a computer genius from the 7th grade, when he learned to handle the machine code language 'assembly 3'. one of just forty to fifty people in Korea with such a talent.
Yang Keun-won, head of the National Police Office's computer crime team commented that a virus creator and hacker like Kim could become a "national treasure" in the information society of the future. He added that he will guide Kim along the legal path of computer work.
(Park Joon-hyun, jhpark@chosun.com)
