doug-merritt@cup.portal.com (05/14/88)
Newsflash: Virus Hits Unix at Bell Labs
Friday the 13th (today) a devastating virus hit Bell Labs at Murray Hill.
Initial reports from survivors indicate that the destruction caused
was very widespread, although limited to Sun workstations. Rumor has
it that the virus was planted by a disgruntled Sun employee in the
Sun Unix kernel. The actual amount of work lost is unknown, as is the
Murray Hill policies on frequency of disk backups.
I have no affiliation with ATT, Bell Labs, Sun, nor with biocybernetic
terrorists.
---
Doug Merritt ucbvax!sun.com!cup.portal.com!doug-merritt
or ucbvax!eris!doug (doug@eris.berkeley.edu)
or ucbvax!unisoft!certes!dougeric@hector.UUCP (Eric Lavitsky) (05/15/88)
In article <5403@cup.portal.com> doug-merritt@cup.portal.com.UUCP writes: >Newsflash: Virus Hits Unix at Bell Labs > >Friday the 13th (today) a devastating virus hit Bell Labs at Murray Hill. >Initial reports from survivors indicate that the destruction caused >... >I have no affiliation with ATT, Bell Labs, Sun, nor with biocybernetic >--- Gee, none of my Suns exhibited this behavior. I think we should nip this in the bud - there was a wild rumour floating around that such a trojan horse existed, but it never came to pass... - Eric ARPA: eric@topaz.rutgers.edu or eric@ulysses.att.com UUCP: {wherever!}ulysses!eric or {wherever!}rutgers!topaz!eric SNAIL: 34 Maplehurst Ln, Piscataway, NJ 08854 "To err is human; To really fuck up requires the root password."
peter@sugar.UUCP (Peter da Silva) (05/16/88)
Whether or not such an event happened, it's not a virus. It's a bomb. A virus is something that gets into the system from outside. -- -- Peter da Silva `-_-' ...!hoptoad!academ!uhnix1!sugar!peter -- "Have you hugged your U wolf today?" ...!bellcore!tness1!sugar!peter -- Disclaimer: These may be the official opinions of Hackercorp.
gore@eecs.nwu.edu (Jacob Gore) (05/17/88)
/ comp.sys.amiga / doug-merritt@cup.portal.com / May 13, 1988 / >Newsflash: Virus Hits Unix at Bell Labs >... >I have no affiliation with ATT, Bell Labs, Sun, nor with biocybernetic >terrorists. ... nor with truth :-) It's been answered in other groups: it never happened. Jacob
doug-merritt@cup.portal.com (05/19/88)
Update:
1) On Friday I posted an article about viruses hitting Suns at Murray Hill;
several people at Murray Hill have since posted denials, and several
Sun employees emailed me chastisements, pointing out that unfounded
rumors like that could hurt Sun's reputation. My apologies for being
careless and irresponsible. Complaining to my system administrator was
a bit much, though, if you ask me...a certain person at Sun was *extremely*
touchy about my posting, which is interesting considering my comments
below. (FYI it usually doesn't help much; sysadmins have better things
to do with their time than to censor people on the FlameNet!)
As to what actually happened, on the one hand it appears that there
was in fact no virus/bomb activated Friday. That's why the apology.
2) On the other hand, my friend who works at Murray Hill (who misunderstood
the situation when he called me from New Jersey Friday and asked me to
post the "news") tells me that there were people there who were sufficiently
worried about a virus hitting on Friday the 13th that they backdated
their clocks for a day. (Backdating means to move the system's time
backwards so that software thinks it's a different date/time than it
really is). He doesn't know *why* they were concerned; people were
tight lipped about it.
Similarly, another friend of mine who works for Sun's Front Line Consulting
told me that their whole department was geared up for potential disaster
on Friday the 13th; they were warned something might happen two days
ahead. Again no one seems to know where the news came from; people
*there* were tight lipped about it, too.
So I find two unrelated people in two different companies on opposite
sides of the country both saying the same thing. Clearly someone,
somewhere, thought there was reason to worry, and warned both Sun *and*
Murray Hill to be careful. And furthermore did a pretty good job of
avoiding random leaks, presumably to avoid a panic (another reason to
avoid posting rumors until they're proven true! Sigh.)
So what I want to know is, why did some people at Sun and Murray Hill
think something might happen? Sounds a little like getting an anonymous
bomb threat. My friend at Murray Hill wants to know why the rest of
the world wasn't warned, also, but I'd say that's debatable...why worry
people over what might be nothing? Maybe someone started the whole thing
as a hoax. Worked as far as Sun Front Line Consulting is concerned...
BTW supposedly a system administrator my friend at Murray Hill knows
says he's going to backdate his clock on the next Friday the 13th, just
to be sure. I don't see any point in that...to me it just underscores
the importance of always backing up your systems. Any random disaster
could happen at any time, not just viruses on Friday the 13th.
Doug
---
Doug Merritt ucbvax!sun.com!cup.portal.com!doug-merritt
or ucbvax!eris!doug (doug@eris.berkeley.edu)
or ucbvax!unisoft!certes!douglphillips@lpami.van-bc.UUCP (Larry Phillips) (05/21/88)
In <5623@cup.portal.com>, doug-merritt@cup.portal.com writes: > ... a certain person at Sun was *extremely* touchy about my posting ... Not altogether surprising. Turn it around and squint a little to get a better perspective, like: "Rumor has it that someone in Doug Merrit's family was responsible for malisciously bringing down an entire network." >So what I want to know is, why did some people at Sun and Murray Hill >think something might happen? Sounds a little like getting an anonymous >bomb threat. My friend at Murray Hill wants to know why the rest of >the world wasn't warned, also, but I'd say that's debatable...why worry >people over what might be nothing? Maybe someone started the whole thing >as a hoax. Worked as far as Sun Front Line Consulting is concerned... Well, I can't speak for the people at Murray Hill or Sun who may have thought something was going to happen last Friday, but there was a story some time ago about a virus/bomb planted in a university (Hebrew University? Can't remember details), that was supposedly going to trigger on May 13. Could it be that the story got blown out of proportion? (nawww... couldn't have anything out of proportion on _this_ net could we?) Or perhaps someone spread additional rumors, capitalizing on the original story. Whatever the reason for the scare, it didn't come to pass, which is A Good Thing. Having it reported as having come to pass is, of course, A Bad Thing, as you have noted and apologized for. -larry -- Janus? Well, look at it this way. If you squint a little, the J could be Amiga checkmark, and the rest of the word describes MsDos. +----------------------------------------------------------------+ | // Larry Phillips | | \X/ {ihnp4!alberta!ubc-vision,uunet}!van-bc!lpami!lphillips | | COMPUSERVE: 76703,4322 | +----------------------------------------------------------------+