With their press engines revvedup, federal and state law enforcers boastedof good old-fashioned gumshoe work thatenabled them to find and catch theAberdeen hacker whose “Melissa virus”infected e-mail systems as near as MurrayHill and as far as Japan and China twoweekends ago.

But what to do now presentssomething of a quandary. David Smith,30, is a first offender, and the worldwiderepercussions of his offenses were more inthe nature of annoyance and delay thanpermanent damage.