Former Hacker Li Jun Donates to Panda Research Center

In 2006, Li Jun, a Chinese man, was jailed for creating the ‘Fujacks’ worm. Recently, he appears to be attempting to rehabilitate his public image by making a donation to a panda research center in China.

Li Jun was arrested in February 2007 and charged with writing and selling the “Panda Burning Joss Sticks” worm for approximately $13,000. Interestingly, Chinese police later convinced him to create a tool to repair the damage caused by the worm to infected users.

The worm earned its nickname because it replaced file icons on infected PCs with the image of a stylized panda bear holding three joss sticks.

Now, having been released from prison, Li Jun has reportedly donated 50,000 yuan ($7,500) to the Chengdu Research Giant Panda Breeding Center to support the care of a bear cub born there five months ago.

China has a deep fascination with pandas, making this gesture a potential PR move. However, his team seemed to overextend this theme by claiming to the Xinhua news agency that Li Jun had also been hired by European antivirus company, Panda Security.

“We have a policy whereby we do not and will not hire black-hat hackers and certainly not previously convicted hackers,” said company CEO Juan Santana in a blog post responding to the claim. Santana also addressed the misinformation on Twitter, stating, “Someone published that we hired a convicted hacker in Panda China. That information is not true. Our PR team is working to clarify this.”

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