Document text
E-virus spurs worldwide havoc By JOHN DARLING A powerful computer virus -- called the "ILOVEYOU" bug -- ripped across the world Thursday, infecting an estimated tens of millions of computers and knocking out communications of countless governments and businesses. The bug is triggered if users click an attachment in an e-mail with a subject line reading "ILOVEYOU." The virus hops to the computer address book and sends the same booby-trapped e-mail to everyone in it. It also erases files storing pictures, video and music. Sure-fire virus protection Protecting yourself against e-mail viruses such as the "ILOVEYOU" bug that infected tens of millions of computers Thursday is simple: Don't open any e-mail attachments you don't recognize, computer experts say. Just delete the files and empty your computer's trash or recycle bin. The "love bug" virus appeared as an e-mail attachment with the subject line "ILOVEYOU" and a message saying, "kindly check the attached LOVELETTER coming from me." When the "LOVELETTER" attachment was opened, it commandeered a computer's Internet browser to visit a Web page, download a program that searches for various types of passwords, and sent them to an e-mail account that appeared to be based in the Philippines. The Web site was later shut down. "If this is unleashed on your home computer, I hope you have backups. It is a destructive file. Once it has run, it has done its damage," said Shawn Hernan, vulnerability team manager of a government-chartered computer security team at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. For more information on viruses and how to protect yourself against them, check out the following on the Net: National Infrastructure Protection Center at www.nipc.gov/ CERT Coordination Center at www.cert.org For antivirus companies, visit: www.symantec.com www.nai.com www.drsolomon.com Most Rogue Valley organizations, such as the city of Ashland and Southern Oregon University, heeded the daily e-mail warnings from their antivirus software suppliers and quickly wrote in protections which prevented computers from opening the "love bug." Others weren't so lucky. "It's been bad here," said Terry Budesa, Rogue Community College student records specialist. "I got here and found an e-mail from the college president. I thought I'd better read it. My computer was down half the day. I'll think twice next time." Rogue Valley Council of Governments went offline for the day, losing 1,500 maps, graphs and images that will have to be restored today from backup files, said RVCOG Information Systems Manager Tim Westfeldt. Rogue Valley Medical Center was hit "fairly hard," generating an estimated 50,000 bugged e-mails in the half hour before computers were shut down at 8:15 a.m., said RVMC Information Services chief Mark Hetz. Patient records weren't affected, but office computers were down six hours, he said. "This was a particularly virulent one. It moved incredibly quickly. We subscribe to an antivirus service, but we didn't get the update from them until 8:20. It's the first time a virus has spread faster than the software to stop it." RVMC Communications Manager Leslie deSchweinitz said, "I saw an e-mail from someone I knew and I opened it, because I have friends and children who e-mail me so I didn't give it a second thought. Someone in the office yelled not to open it but it was too late." The virus got through the firewall of the main "exchange server" computer at Medford 549c School District, finding its way to desktops where, finally, the Norton antivirus program stopped users from opening it, said Information Services Manager Jim Scharaga. "You'd hope the antivirus program would catch it as it came in the door, but it didn't. We shut off the net for the day. It took four of us three hours, but by 10:30 we had it cleaned up," he said. Who would do such a thing? "A prankster," said Marty Rush, support manager for Infostructure, an Internet service provider. "People who think they're funny. The same kind of person who'd scrape your car with their key or throw eggs at it." Internet service providers are not affected by the virus, he added. Many people were saved by news reports on the way to work. "Our department wasn't hit," said RCC community relations specialist Ryanne Webb. "One guy here heard it on the radio, so we deleted all the e-mails." "We heard about it on NPR (National Public Radio)," said Allison Zigich, Talent city office specialist, "so when the city administrator got one, we phoned the person it came from and didn't open it." Many organizations open business each day with a virus drill. The city of Ashland's Command software (commandcom.com) "grabs viruses in the wild before they crop up en masse," said city help desk director Pat Hopkins. "They advise us of every new virus, we take the antivirus off the net, put it in the hard drive and it scans automatically." The cost for such protection? Just $29.95 a month. The city of Medford has the "latest and greatest" antivirus protection software, said Information Services director Jim Pulliam, so only one "love bug" was reported. It was received by the police chief. Jackson County Information Services chief Tom Libby said he zapped the virus early in the day and it showed up on only a few computers, where it was deleted. The bug infested 120,000 computers in the United States alone by 7 a.m. PDT, mostly in the East, said Trend Micro computer security firm. Many computers were knocked off-line in the high-tech systems of big companies and financial traders, as well as Congress and the British and Danish parliaments. In Britain, 30 percent of company e-mail systems were down, while in Sweden it was 80 percent. Lessons learned? "Most people know not to open attachments unless they expect them. We're going to be doing a bit of educating on those people," said RVMC's Hetz. "We spent 40-60 hours fixing it. We lost productivity but we found, in some cases, not having e-mail definitely may increase productivity." Today's Edition : News | Sports | Business | Weather | Tempo | Classifieds Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 2000, Medford, Oregon USA