A Kaohsiung-based computer engineer was arrested for designing a new Trojan virus that provided hackers with the means to attack Taiwan government agencies and local enterprises' computer systems, officials from the Criminal Investigation Bureau disclosed yesterday.

More than one thousand computers in Taiwan were infected recently with variations of the virus.

Wang Ping-an, a thirty year-old software engineer, was apprehended on May 25, as CIB computer crime investigators discovered that he had created the original Trojan horse program called "Peep". Wang illegally obtained confidential information and subsequently made the program available to other hackers.

At least one thousand computers in Taiwan–mainframes of government agencies and private enterprises as well individual personal computers–were infected with variations of the Trojan virus that Wang created, CIB investigators said.