From: William Knowles (wkC4I.ORG)
Date: Thu May 04 2000 - 11:18:21 CDT

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http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,36122,00.html

by Lynn Burke
10:00 a.m. May. 4, 2000 PDT

The "Love Bug" worm: It's the kind of potential disaster that can
bring a company to its knees. Especially if you're an anti-virus
software company.

So who was prepared and who wasn't?

F-Secure Corporation, a company with headquarters in Finland and San
Jose, California, says it was the first to find a fix after it
detected the worm around 2 a.m. PDT.

"Other vendors weren't protected," said spokeswoman Alison Tre.

Although F-Secure didn't name names, Tre did say that the company
shared its fix with all the major security companies. "It's sort of an
unwritten rule," she said.

No way, say Symantec officials.

"It was about 2 a.m. this morning when we started work on it and we
had a cure within an hour," said Vincent Weafer, director of the
company's antivirus reseasrch center.

He said the "Love Bug" wasn't a "complex" worm in that it doesn't
mutate or change, and so Symantec did not have to confer with other
anti-virus companies like F-Secure (formerly known as Data Fellows).
Usually when the worm is complex, he said, companies will share
analysis and information.

"Equally important was to get information on the website to tell
people what it was and alert our customers that it was spreading."

The folks at Network Associates' McAfee agree.

Sal Viveros, McAfee director, said he thinks they found the worm and
fixed it first, at 5 and 6 p.m. Wednesday. But that's not the point,
he said.

"Right now it's in epidemic proportions in Europe," he said. "It
doesn't matter who was first right now."

The "Love Bug," which has spread from Europe to the United States with
alarming speed, is referred to as a "worm" for its ability to "worm"
itself into a computer system and spread via email delivery.

"This is very similar to Melissa," said Tre, referring to the virus
that infected tens of thousands of computers of damage in March 1999.

"We know it's spreading like absolute wildfire."

Elisa Batista contributed to this report.

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Intelligence without communications is irrelevant."
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