"You see so many on message labs. They catch one infection, two infections, three infections and you hear no more of them. You're doing the same as other people. Yours just happens to be one that spreads. I wouldn't say it was the function of the 'worm' that made it spread. "I'd say it was probably more to do with the message bodies or subject lines. You could call it social engineering rather than programming that made it spread. Subject lines were Shakespeare quotes, some WH Auden quotes and music. "The worm would create a random number inside itself and compare that to a list of predefined subjects, message bodies and basically repeat that cycle. Think of a subject line, send itself out, do it again." Does he feel sorry for his victims? Vallor said: "Yeah. I couldn't tell you if they were business or home users. The one upside I suppose is it didn't have a damaging payload. It wasn't going out to delete data or overwrite files. It was a nuisance, there's no denying that but it wasn't damaging. It could have been worse." Experts exaggerate estimates of millions of pounds' damage, he claims. He described the day of his arrest by police last year. He recalled: "They came at about 7am on Valentine's Day. I was in bed. I felt shocked it was so out of the blue. It was totally mindblowing. One minute you're asleep, the next you've got Scotland Yard in your bedroom. The main thing - without swearing - was: "Oh bugger. What have I done?" That was the point when I realised the severity of what I had done. If I'd realised it had done what it did and I was going to get arrested I wouldn't have done it. | 
