Gigabyte (virus writer)

Background

Kimberley Vanvaeck, known online as Gigabyte, is a virus writer from Belgium. She gained recognition within the information security community both for her technical work in malware authorship and for a prolonged public dispute with the internet security firm Sophos.

Notable Work

Vanvaeck authored several viruses during her active period, including Quis, Coconut, and YahaSux — the latter also referred to as Sahay. Her most technically significant creation is a virus written in C#, known as Sharpei (also called the Sharp virus), which is credited as the first virus ever written in the C# programming language. This distinction marked a notable moment in the history of malware development, as it demonstrated that the then-relatively new Microsoft .NET language could be used as a vehicle for malicious code.

Dispute with Sophos and Graham Cluley

Vanvaeck became involved in a long-standing dispute with Sophos, a prominent internet security firm, and specifically with one of its employees, Graham Cluley. The conflict originated after Cluley made public comments regarding the gender of virus writers. In response, Vanvaeck wrote several viruses that specifically targeted Cluley. She maintained that these were created as proof-of-concept works rather than being released into the wild for widespread distribution. The dispute drew broader attention to questions of gender representation and perception within hacker and virus-writing communities.