Warning: Your typical junkie could be a computer hacker

If he is 14 to 20 years old, particularly intelligent, perhaps bespectacled, lean and has prominent eye bags because he almost always lacks sleep, he is likely hooked on computers rather than prohibited drugs.

The National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) said this is the "profile" of a Filipino computer hacker who can unleash a damaging computer virus as a prank or commit big-time computer crimes as a profession.

Efren Menesses, chief of the NBI anti-fraud and computer crimes division (AFCCD), came up with their profile after he noted the steadily rising incidence of computer crimes in the country.

"What many Filipinos do not know is that hacking is beginning to be prevalent," said Menesses, who has handled nine cases of computer crimes since a little-known computer hacker unleashed the "I Love You" virus on the wired world early in May last year.

Menesses said some of the "computer crimes" they have handled involve perpetrators who are just bored kids who want to take their laptop or desktop computers out for a spin.

"Right now, many of the crimes are only petty kinds of hacking with young teenagers involved but all robbers started off as petty thieves, right?" Menesses said.

The AFCCD classifies as "petty crimes" the "Erap virus," which was traced to two youths separately based in Laguna and Baguio City, and the case of a group of teenagers who attacked a private company’s web site.

But the AFCCD also probes many other crimes, like credit card fraud, that often involve Filipinos conniving with foreign nationals based in other Asian cities, like Singapore or Bangkok, Thailand.

There are also cases of computer-related theft of proprietary information, or computer espionage, which involves stealing vital information from a company and selling it to competitors.

In a recent computer espionage case, the AFCCD charged Caesar Mañalac, 31, and Leilani Garcia, 26, of violating the recently passed Electronic Commerce Act on the complaint of a graduate business school.

Mañalac used to be the chief information technology officer while Garcia was systems coordinator of the Thames International Business School, owned by Vivienne Tan, daughter of tycoon Lucio Tan.

Menesses claimed they found evidence that Mañalac stole the school’s business plan as well study guides in marketing and accounting and set up a company "strikingly similar" to Thames.

"Mañalac tried to make it appear to his Canadian client that the company was already existing, when in fact it was not, just to lure the investor to give him millions of dollars for the project," said NBI agent Palmer Mallari.

Aside from the study guides, Mañalac also allegedly stole the school’s confidential business files which were found in a filing cabinet in his former office.

Garcia, on the other hand, was found to have illegally accessed about 18 times Thames’ e-mail account from December 2000 to January 2001 using passwords that were supposedly known only to Mañalac and Tan.