WANT a high paying job? Perhaps a little online vandalism will help your chances.

A network company in eastern China has offered a job paying a million yuan (US$133,155) a year to Li Jun -- the inventor of the most destructive computer virus in China -- although he was sentenced to four years in prison yesterday.

Jushu Technology Co, which is based in Hangzhou City, Zhejiang Province, said it would like to hire Li Jun, the author of the worm.whboy, or "panda burning joss sticks," to be its technology director as "the company can offer a good platform to show his talents," the Hubei-based Changjiang Times reported today.

Li, a 25-year-old Wuhan native, received the sentence for writing and profiting from the panda worm that infected over a million computers countrywide and caused huge losses, a court in Hubei Province announced yesterday.

Company general manager Dong Zhenguo told the newspaper that the company fell prey to the worm and he personally hates what Li has done.

However, he later learned from media reports that Li, who created the virus over discontent at his failure to land a job, may not be a bad guy and "just went astray," the report said.

So far, about 10 network companies across the country have offered jobs to Li, whom they regarded was a "precious genius," the report said citing Li's lawyer Wang Wanxiong.

Li's cyber bug, which earned him about 145,000 yuan after selling it to other hackers from December 2006 to February this year, can prevent infected computers from operating anti-virus software and all programs using the "exe" suffix.

The worm could also steal users' online game account information and passwords for accounts with online instant communication tools, such as the popular QQ, developed by Shenzhen-based Tencent Holdings Ltd.

Computer owners learned that their systems were infected when their executable file icons turned into images of pandas with burning joss sticks.

The worm received the first five-star severity rating ever issued by the Shanghai Information Technology Service Center because it could attack local-area networks in government bureaus and companies and damage their programs and databases.

Three of Li's accomplices were also jailed for up to two-and-a-half-years each yesterday.