The Southern Co. says that because their technicians acted quickly, little damage was done RELATED VIDEO CNN's Ann Kellan reports on the worm virus' attack on The Southern Company's e-mail system. Real 28K 80K Windows Media 28K 80K  ALSO:            Message Boards:    How do you define a hacker?    Computer viruses    In-Depth Special:    Insurgency on the Internet    For more computing stories

June 16, 1999
Web posted at: 3:35 p.m. EDT (1935 GMT)

ATLANTA (CNN) -- The computer worm that surfaced last week is still burrowing, but some companies were able to undo the damage quickly.

When 33,000 Southern Co. employees got the warning that their company, the largest producer of electricity in the United States, had been attacked by the virus, 305 of the company's 20,000 computers got hit.

"We were very fortunate because our technicians got a hold of it...(and) let everybody know," Southern Co. computer analyst Lynn Mulkey.said about Worm.Explore.Zip.

More than 40 major businesses, including Intel, Microsoft, Boeing, AT&T and General Electric, have been hit. According to CERT, a government-supported computer security center in Pittsburgh, the 911 calls are still coming in.

"In terms of data loss, it is a pretty significant event," Mulkey said. "In terms of the extent to which it is spread it still seems to be a small-to-medium event. So I would characterize it that it is a big problem for a small number of sites."

Many companies, like Southern Co., sent warnings to employees not to open e-mail attachments, even from people they knew because that's exactly how the worm sneaks in.

"When they see the message, they're not to open it, but delete it immediately," Mulkey said.

Robert Beason, Southern's chief information officer, called the worm "one of the most intelligent viruses we have ever seen or worked with É just by the nature of how it spread itself."

Unlike the previous Melissa virus, this infection can worm its way through computer networks. If one person opens an infected e-mail attachment and their computer is connected to a network, the worm can destroy not only their files, but files on other computers in the network as well.

The virus arrives in a person's e-mail box disguised as a reply from an acquaintance. The message invites the recipient to open an attached file that will unleash a two-pronged attack, sending a copy of itself to the address of any arriving e-mail and destroying files, such as documents, spreadsheets and graphic presentations, stored on a person's machine. The worm then can move on to other networked computers.

The Southern Co. says that because their technicians acted quickly, little damage was done. And since their e-mail is on a separate network, the power supply to customers never was in jeopardy.

"We keep those very separate," Beason said, "and this is one of the reasons we do that separation."

Most companies refuse to say how much damage was done to their systems.

Correspondent Ann Kellan contributed to this report.

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