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Saturday Morning News

How Can Computer Users Protect Against Viruses Like the Love Bug?

Aired May 6, 2000 - 8:15 a.m. ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Well, since we can't seem to live without computers, the question now becomes how can we protect them from viruses like the Love Bug? Joining us now to discuss this and some other matters is Peter Tippett. He is the chief technologist for Icsa.net, a leader in security assurance services for Internet connected companies.

Welcome to our program, sir.

PETER TIPPETT, CHIEF TECHNOLOGIST, ICSA.NET: Good morning, Miles.

O'BRIEN: Put this one in perspective for us, will you? The one we might recall would be the famous Melissa virus, or infamous, perhaps. How does this one compare?

TIPPETT: This virus is at least twice and maybe four times more deadly and prevalent than the Melissa virus. The Melissa virus infected in a big way 15 percent of North American corporations. This one at least infected 60 percent.

O'BRIEN: Wow, that's a big number. Now, how do you assign a damage number to something like this? In many ways it's very benign. In some ways it can cause some serious damage, can't it?

TIPPETT: In the Melissa case, the minimum damage was $93 million. Since this one is more, we're expecting it's going to be in the $300 million or $400 million range. We're measuring that now. We'll have good numbers at Icsa.net next week.

O'BRIEN: How serious are the implications, really? Is this -- I've seen some people say well this is more or less graffiti, essentially, and graffiti is bothersome, an annoyance, it costs money to clean up but when all is said and done, not a lot of serious damage is done.

TIPPETT: I think that's true in the case of this virus. But when you take 10 minutes of 100 million people's time that's a lot of minutes. So there's a lot of wasted time. You can think of it as a snowstorm but in every city everywhere.

O'BRIEN: All right, that's a good way of putting it, I guess. Now, what's interesting about this particular virus is it's not unlike some other attempts in the past in that it exploits an Achilles' heel in the Microsoft programs in particular, the fact that it has a lot of automated e-mail functions, for example. Now it seems to me that there's an inherent conflict here between that functionality and security. How do we all strike the balance here?

TIPPETT: Well, first, if it weren't Microsoft it would be somebody else and anybody would have good automation in software. How you strike the balance? Lots of features in software to let you turn automation off would be a good idea.

O'BRIEN: All right, now what about if you go to your Web site here for just a moment on your home page at Icsa.net, the headline is "Who Done It?" And presumably a lot of work is still under way at this moment and from what we're hearing people are getting close to who they think might be a suspect in all of this. Is it very likely that suspect will be identified?

TIPPETT: I think in this case we will probably get the suspect. This, one beauty of moving fast is that the trail doesn't get cold quickly and you have a lot of evidence in a hurry. We identified a Trojan horse, a program that steals passwords that this particular person wrote in January and again last fall. That program has other identifying information that also points to Manila and to a particular university there. There's lots of evidence in the code itself that helps point us to the person. We're working with both the FBI and the Justice Department on this and I think at Icsa.net we think that this guy will be caught.

O'BRIEN: You know, in the world of hackers there's kind of a strict caste system. There are hackers and then there are hackers. The real hackers would tell you that a lot of what is done these days isn't very novel or interesting, it's sort of paint by numbers hacking, and what that leads one to believe is that really anybody can do it if they go to the right chat room and download the right program. Do you see it that way?

TIPPETT: Yes. This virus was an amalgamation of four or five other viruses. This virus was not particularly special. In fact, we're not sure that this virus writer has ever written a virus before. He wrote programs to steal passwords before as far as we know and it looks to us like he was looking for a way to get that program...

O'BRIEN: Wow. It looks like we had a bit of a satellite virus there. We're so sorry to Mr. Tippett there. Our satellite time obviously expired. We got switched around and we'll have to continue that discussion at some other occasion.

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