China jails creator of "panda" computer virus for four years

Sep 24, 2007, 9:48 GMT

Beijing - A court in central China on Monday sentenced a computer programmer to four years in prison for creating and spreading a virus known as 'panda burns joss sticks,' a court official said.

Three other defendants were sentenced to between one year and two and a half years in prison for their role in spreading Li Jun's virus, the official told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa by telephone from Xiantao city in Hubei province.

Prosecutors told the court in Xiantao that 25-year-old Li and the other defendants had caused 'huge damage to millions of computer users' from November to March.

The four men earned at least 200,000 yuan (27,000 dollars) by selling the worm-style virus, state media said.

The arrests over the virus, which got its name because it displays a series of cartoon pandas as it steals passwords and deletes data, were the first criminal cases involving a computer virus in China.

Li said he developed the virus because he was unable to find a job after finishing a training course in computing.

'I wanted to find a job in an internet security company, but I failed every time,' he was quoted as telling police after his arrest.

Earlier reports said police had detained four more suspects in other areas of China after Li sold the virus to 120 people for a total of more than 100,000 yuan.

The main icon of the virus is a panda holding three joss sticks in the style of a traditional incense offering at Chinese Buddhist and Taoist temples.

Hubei police said earlier that Li had written software to kill the virus and that they planned to publish it free of charge on the internet.

The official Xinhua news agency quoted China's leading anti-virus software firm, Rising, as saying that more than 133,000 new viruses were detected in China in the first half of 2007.

China was 'in urgent need of legislation on cybercrimes' to protect its estimated 162 million internet users, the agency quoted experts as saying.