Date: 26 Jul 1994 07:36:41 -0600 (MDT) From: Chris McDonald Subject: British Police Claim to Have Caught Virus Author!! To: orvis@icdc.llnl.gov To: bull@wsmr-emh34.army.mil Apparently-To: orvis@icdc.llnl.gov LONDON, July 18 (Reuter) - British police said on Monday they had caught a man alleged to have written three damaging computer viruses and they appealed for victims to contact them. A member of the London-based police computer crime unit said a man from the port town of Plymouth, southwest England, had been charged and released on bail awaiting trial in November. The viruses, Queeg, named after a character in a television science fiction series, Pathogen and Germ, destroy data on a computer's hard disk and can disable the external disk drive, meaning victims have to take their computer apart to fix it. Once triggered, the viruses display a message on the computer screen: ``Smoke me a kipper, I'll be back for breakfast...Unfortunately some of your data won't.'' The computer unit officer said the viruses, which industry specialists have called the nastiest they had seen, used codings designed to avoid detection by standard anti-virus programs. Police are investigating how far the viruses, first detected in February, have spread and how much damage they have done.