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The people interviewed for this article spoke under the condition of anonymity, thus all names mentioned have been changed.

JAMIE works a nine-to-five shift at a Quezon City pet store. At night, he goes on the Internet from five to nine as "Invertebro," the one who gives away free hacked music files (MP3) to anyone via Internet Relay Chat (IRC). Arlene is a Makati-based computer programmer by day. She is known as "Shadowed" on IRC--the one who gives free hacked Internet accounts to anyone who does not want to cough up thousands of pesos to an Internet Service Provider (ISP). "Ron" develops films at a photo center in Quiapo during the day. At night, he is busy developing codes for cellular phones to make free long distance calls as "Cosmo."

Depending on who you talk to, these three are either "hackers" or "crackers"--those who risk jail time in order to get into other people's hard drives.

"Hackers pride themselves in making these kinds of things happen while leaving the community guessing who did it," says Adam Shostack, a security expert at Montreal's Zero-Knowledge Systems, an Internet privacy firm. "Consequently, one seldom knows who is responsible--sometimes a hacking group will take credit for a particular hack."

Sounds familiar? This is exactly what happened in the last few days with Onel de Guzman and his now infamous group, GRAMMERsoft. De Guzman neither confirmed nor denied that he created the ILOVEYOU virus, and now even the FBI is after his GRAMMERsoft buddies.

Last year, the sites of North American federal agencies--including those of the Canadian RCMP, Industry Canada, the Pentagon, Human Resources, and the FBI--were penetrated and altered by hackers. In all, 44 attacks on government mainframes were documented in Canada alone, and dozens more untracked.

In February, continuous hack attacks crippled major electronic commerce sites, including E-bay.com, Yahoo.com and Amazon.com. A 15-year-old Montreal-based hacker using the handle "Mafiaboy" was arrested for crippling the famous search engine, Yahoo!

Here, 23-year-old de Guzman is believed to be behind the "Love Bug" virus that wreaked havoc all over the world on May 4, costing approximately $10 billion US in damages worldwide. De Guzman became a suspect after authorities found out that he wrote a thesis on stealing passwords, which could have been combined with other programs to create the Love Bug.

A similar case happened last February, when a Canadian court convicted a 22-year-old man of fraudulently using computer passwords to perpetrate computer crimes--the first time a Canadian court has passed sentence in such a case.

Quebec City resident Pierre-Guy Lavoie was found guilty of hacking hundreds of passwords, access codes to break into dozens of unauthorized government and corporate sites in 1998, including the Canadian Department of National Defence, the United States military and the FBI.

Lavoie, a security consultant for a financial institution, was sentenced to 12 months of community service and placed on 12 months of probation. He was also ordered not to touch a computer or surf the Internet over the next 12 months, except on the job while under surveillance.

No such law is being implemented in the Philippines to combat high-tech cybercrimes.

"These people think they're smart," says Det. Sgt. Jacques Viau of the Montreal Urban Community Technical Crimes Unit, who was responsible for the arrest of Mafiaboy. "But there's always something they leave on the Internet that will lead us to them--always."

One of these trails is the IP or the Internet Protocol, he says, that will always point to the hacker, as every computer has its own IP address that is embedded on the Internet provider's server or to the destination of the hack. It serves like an Internet ID, says Viau. Often, hackers forget to erase the cookie on their hard drive. Cookies are bits of information that the destination's server leaves on your hard drive once you visit a website.

"@locator Lea Salonga--I Honestly Love You," types Xanielle inside the chat room called "Cable-Pinoy-Mp3."

"3 records of Lea Salonga--I Honestly Love You found. Type: !Lea Salonga--I Honestly Love You to start the download," replies the "Bot"--an IRC script (or command) made by Jamie-Invertebro that can fulfill commands without his supervision.

"Call us leeches, but we don't do any harm to people," says Invertebro. "Those who do harm are called 'crackers'--they are the ones who ruined those servers last February. What I do is of service to people, I don't harm anyone.

Invertebro copies high-quality MP3 files directly from other people's hard drives and gives them away for free inside chat rooms upon people's request.

He also comes in and installs a Web or FTP server on computers with high-speed or cable connections, so that it is turned into a server and people can upload and download MP3s from it.

"I don't damage their hard drives, sometimes I even repair it as a way of saying thank you," he says. "I don't even play pranks or practical jokes on them by leaving my name on their PC, saying I hacked them--no, those are for lamers," he adds, pertaining to hacker wannabes or beginners.

"For me, hacking is legal as long as you share the goods with everyone else," says Shadowed.

She hacks ISP mainframes and servers, looking for Internet accounts that she gives away on the chat room called "Hack_You."

"!account," types a chatter with the handle Serene.

"GLOBE cmloo:cmlo24 INEXT dionisio:father SURFSHOP tocastro:1234 ACCESS mico:rockow PORTALINK bobby:bobby4 INFOCOM abacus:741953 PHILONLINE kp-equip:rueful PWORLD kronin:rbv0829," types another chatter using the nick "Krizel."

Shadowed explains the above accounts: "The first word in all caps is the ISP, followed by the username:password." These accounts don't last longer than two days she says, because the owners, or sometimes even the hackers themselves, change the passwords. But all they have to do is just go back to the chat room and ask for new accounts.

"Accounts are available 24/7 (24 hours, seven days a week)," she says.

She doesn't harm people, she adds, because she makes sure that the accounts she gives away have unlimited access, so the owner doesn't have to pay extra for additional hours used.

"The Internet is free in itself, so access to it should be free as well," says Invertebro, who relies on Shadowed for his free Internet account. "Free Internet for everyone!"

He also supports the alleged Love Bug creator's philosophy of free Internet for all. De Guzman was quoted as saying: "The Internet is supposed to be educational, so it should be for free."

Invertebro says people like him and Shadowed are doing a crusade. "Down with the big companies!" he types in the chatroom, while other chatters type "LOL," which means "Laughing Out Loud."

"Music has been very expensive in recent years, so people started burning (copying) CDs or convert them into MP3 format," he explains. "But not everyone has a CD Writer, that's why I go inside the PCs of these people blessed with CD Writers and copy their files. Plus, most of us are using regular modems, so I have to find a computer with a cable or high-speed connection to use as a server, so downloads won't take long."

"*3001#12345#," Cosmo dials on the keypad of his red Nokia 5190 cellular phone.

"Check this out, I found the code to reprogram your Nokia cell to make free calls," he brags.

Cosmo is what people call a "phreaker"--those who hack phones to make free long distance calls.

He looks up to John Draper, or Captain_Krunch of the Internet world, as his role model.

Captain_Krunch was among the first phreakers in the 1980s, who made free phone calls by blowing a precise tone into a payphone that sends a signal for free international calls. He used a whistle that he found from a Captain Krunch cereal box, thus earning him the name.

"But those were the days when payphones were so low-tech," says Cosmo. "Now you have to have the brains to do it."

These days, Cosmo says, it is not the payphones that phreakers hack because phone companies caught up with the system.

"But now we hack cell phones--you won't believe how low-tech they are!"

The United States and the Canadian Federal governments are not taking this matter lightly. After the February attacks on major websites, the Department of National Defence of Canada in Ottawa created a new unit--Defence Research Establishment--to study and try to pin down hackers.

"We are trying to develop hack programs ourselves, hoping to have them first before these hackers could even think about it," says Prakash Bhartia, director general of the department.

He adds that they hired rehabilitated hackers to work for them.

"We will beat these hackers and crackers in their own game, using some of their own," Bhartia laughs.

Meanwhile, inside the chat room, Invertebro, Shadowed and Cosmo are typing LOL when asked if the Philippines has the same capability as Canada and the United States in battling the hackers.

"What are you talking about? They are all lamers here anyway! .... LOL!!!!" types Shadowed.