whitney@think.COM (David Whitney) (09/27/88)
I feel the need to blather. Strike one up for the good guys...
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Date: Wednesday, 21 September 1988 22:53-EDT
From: Brodie Lockard <I.ISIMO at LEAR.STANFORD.EDU>
To: INFO-MAC
Re: Virus Conviction
COMPUTER VIRUS CONVICTION MAY BE A FIRST
San Francisco Chronicle, 9/21/88
Fort Worth
A former programmer has been convicted of placing a computer "virus" in his
employer's system that wiped out 168,000 payroll records two days after he was
fired.
Tarrant County Assistant District Attorney Davis McCown said yesterday that
he believes that he is the first prosecutor in the nation to have someone
convicted for destroying computer records using a "virus."
A virus is a computer program, often hidden in apparently normal computer
software, that instructs the computer to change or destroy information at a
given time or after a certain sequence of commands.
"We've had people stealing through computers but not this type of case,"
McCown said. "The basis for this offense is deletion."
Donald Gene Burleson, 40, was convicted Monday of charges of harmful access
to a computer, a felony that carries up to 10 years in prison and up to $5,000
in fines.
A key to the case was the fact that State District Judge John Bradshaw
allowed the computer program that deleted the files to be introduced as
evidence, McCown said. It would have been difficult to get a conviction
otherwise, he said.
The jury deliberated six hours before bringing back the first conviction
under the state's 3-year-old computer sabotage law.
Burleson planted the virus in revenge for his firing from an insurance
company, McCown said.
Jurors were told during a sometimes technically complicated three-week trial
that Burleson planted a rogue program in the computer system used to store
records at USPA and IRA Co., a Fort Worth insurance and brokerage firm.
The virus, McCown said, was activated on Sept. 21, 1985, two days after
Burleson was fired as a computer programmer because of alleged personality
conflicts with other employees.
"There were [sic] a series of programs built into the system as early as
Labor Day (1985)," McCown said. "Once he got fired, those programs went off."
The virus was discovered two days later, after it had eliminated 168,000
payroll records, holding up company paychecks for more than a month. The
virus could have caused hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage to the
system had it continued, McCown said.
Brodie Lockard
I.ISIMO@LEAR.STANFORD.EDU
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Things seem to be getting bad for virus authors. Damn shame :-)
David Whitney, MIT '90 DISCLAIMER: Nobody knows what I'm up
{out there}!harvard!think!whitney to. Don't blame them for my actions
whitney@think.com nor me for theirs.
^^^^^ will be changing before 1989 is here. Don't depend on it after 1/1/89.