Teen hacker's conviction taken as a sign of technological progress in Morocco

RABAT, Morocco — Morocco's most internationally famous criminal of late is not a terrorist or serial killer, but a young man with a knack for computers.

The conviction this week of a Moroccan science student for unleashing the Zotob worm that ravaged U.S. computer networks last year could even be cast as proof that this agriculture-dependent, unemployment-plagued nation is making its mark on the digital world.

In August 2005, Zotob crashed computers across the United States, including those of The Associated Press, The New York Times and other media organizations; companies such as heavy-equipment maker Caterpillar; and the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement bureau.

Farid Essebar, then 18, was arrested soon afterward along with accomplices in Morocco and Turkey in a sweep by U.S., Moroccan and Turkish police. On Tuesday a court in Sale, near the capital, Rabat, sentenced him to two years in prison and gave his friend Achraf Bahloul one year.

While few Moroccans are willing to defend Essebar's flagrantly criminal hacking feat, many see it as evidence that their country is making the leap to computer literacy.

"There's a bit of pride that a local kid was good enough and had the tools" to create Zotob, said Karl Stanzick, managing director of MTDS, a Rabat-based high-speed Internet provider.

Moroccans' Internet use has exploded in the past two years, since national telecommunications company Maroc Telecom went private and opened telephone networks for DSL high-speed Internet. Now there are an estimated 300,000 DSL connections in Morocco, Stanzick said.

Three years ago, a sluggish dial-up connection cost $500 a month, Stanzick said, while today a broadband link roughly 30 times faster costs just $50.

High-speed Internet has yet to reach much of Morocco's countryside, where even telephones are still scarce. Morocco has just 2.35 computers for every 100 inhabitants — compared with 76 in the United States, according to the International Telecommunications Union.

But in urban centers like Rabat, the Internet is fast becoming a lifestyle.

Cybercafes dot the city, from stylish air-conditioned joints to cramped dens tucked into the old medina, where even the poorest can, for a few cents, bathe for hours in the blue glow of the screen. Schools offering courses in programming and computer use have sprouted.

"When I first opened in 1998, 90 percent of my customers were government workers who didn't even have the Internet in their offices," recounted Khalid Limane, the owner of Globalnet, a cybercafe.

Now, his customers are mostly students dropping in to check e-mail or use Globalnet's printer or fax machine.

"But even most of them have Internet at home, too," he added.