Software Company Sues HMS Researcher

Sitting in Algiers Coffee House, Guillaume Tena sipped mint tea and defended himself against accusations that he is a “digital terrorist.”

At 6’2, with slicked black hair and a black leather trench coat over a black shirt and black jeans, Tena hardly looks like he just stepped out of a molecular biology lab.

“I don’t look like a criminal, do I?” he said facetiously.

In 2002, the French software company Tegam International sued Tena, a Harvard Medical School researcher working at Mass. General Hospital, for his publication of over a dozen flaws he had discovered in the Viguard antivirus software system published by the company.

The trial was held on Jan. 4 of this year and the verdict will be announced on March 8.

According to Tena, his dispute with Tegam began in the summer of 2001, when he spoke out against the company at a forum on technology, saying the its claim that Viguard provided 100 percent virus protection was invalid.

When various media challenged him to prove his claim, Tena began to conduct research on the side and found 14 different viruses that were not detected by Viguard in addition to several “false positives”—normal programs Viguard erroneously identified as viruses.

After conducting his research, Tena said that he e-mailed the software makers, alerting them to and asking them to correct the flaws.

“Though I had conducted things in a very straightforward manner, Tegam did not take my e-mails seriously,” Tena said.

Tegam CEO Marc Dotan claimed, however, that Tena did not e-mail the company until the negative information was posted online.

Tena said that he subsequently posted his findings on his website in spring 2002 and was sued in summer 2002 for violating French copyright law.

He said he was surprised that the company did not simply respond to his e-mails and work to improve the program, noting that their decision to sue instead of correcting their flaws has given them worldwide bad advertising.

“I’m a scientist. I’m rational,” Tena said. “I never said that their program was total crap. I just recognized some flaws and made suggestions to improve them.”

But Tegam said in a public statement on its website that the company is skeptical of his motivations.

“The author’s goal was not to demonstrate an objective reality, but rather to cause doubt and to dissuade a certain target group from choosing Viguard,” the statement said.

Tegam also expressed anger at the way that the media has portrayed the case, saying that the company is not trying to “impede freedom of speech” or “obstruct research projects.”

Upon hearing about the lawsuit, Tena said he removed all comments about Viguard from his website.

Tena explained that being pegged as a terrorist was a frightening concept, in the wake of post-Sept. 11 accusations. It was eerie, he said, that his trial was conducted right next door to an actual terrorism case.

“This case is especially important for the future of computer security,” Tena said. “If they don’t allow people like me to conduct research in this manner, hackers will find a way to find the same things I am finding but actually use it.”

Dotan said he is confident that Tegam will prevail in the case.

“[Tena] is in a bad position and he knows it,” he said.

He also expressed anger at Harvard’s apparent inability to detect Tena’s software testing activity, which he conducted on the University’s computer network.

Tena has been sued for 900,000 euros—about $1.2 million—on top of 6,000 euros in fines, but he said that the company will never receive that amount from him.

Tena said that he does appreciate some of the positive response he has been receiving.

“I recently received $50 from someone in Germany who thinks that I am in an unfair situation,” he said.

Tena says that he is still going to remain firm throughout the case.

“I’m kind of pessimistic. It’s so easy to impress judges with heavily connoted words like ‘virus,’ ‘pirate,’ ‘terrorist,’ ‘hacker’ and it’s difficult on the other hand to explain the scientific method and the deep curiosity that makes us analyze how software works and find their flaws,” Tena wrote last March on his website.

Tena, who studies the immune systems of plants, said that “fooling around” with computers has always been a hobby, and that detecting ways to fight bugs in biological research is similar to finding bugs in computer programs.

“Though there are certainly many differences between the fields, it’s an interesting intellectual thought experiment to connect the two concepts,” he said.

Tena, who was born and raised in Montpellier, France, said the complaint filed against him has been an especially intimidating experience because he is in the United States on a work visa.

—Staff writer Nicole B. Urken can be reached at urken@fas.harvard.edu.