krvw@cert.sei.cmu.edu (Kenneth R. van Wyk) (09/26/90)
The Ithaca Journal Tuesday September 25, 1990 (reprinted by permission) "IHS student unleashes computer viruses" by Chris Swingle Journal Staff A 16-year-old Ithaca High School student created computer viruses that spread during the summer to dozens of Macintosh personal computers in Ithaca, officials reported Monday. Computers at Ithaca High, BAKA Computers Inc. and Cornell University were affected, but the problems are now believed solved. The viruses took hundreds -- or even thousands -- of work hours to fix, one official estimated. "It can be described as a nuisance," said Ted Palmer, a senior investigator with the New York State Police in Cortland who specializes in computer crime investigations. The Ithaca High School teenager, whose name wasn't released, isn't being prosecuted because he cooperated and agreed to help police in future investigations, Palmer said. Computer viruses are miniature programs that can replicate and spread from one computer to another, much as microorganism do. These viruses can wreak havoc -- tying up computer's memory, interrupting normal operations, causing errors or even destroying data. The IHS case comes almost two years after a Cornell University graduate student drew national attention with a similar type of rogue program called a "worm," which jammed some 6,000 government, military and university computers. Robert T. Morris Jr. was convicted on federal charges of computer tampering in January, and he was sentenced to 400 hours of community service and fined $10,000. This summer's two local viruses, which additionally had variations, didn't destroy any information, but did spread quickly from disk to disk. The virus "infected" a new computer by moving into the hard disk core of the computer, then hopping onto the next disk that was put in the computer. "All that was necessary is that a disk be inserted, to be infected," said Mark Anbinder, a technical consultant for BAKA. "So it was a particularly annoying one." "I would describe it as serious in that it interferes with the computers' operation," he added. One virus was first discovered in May, and another strain appeared in August, Anbinder said. A police investigation started Aug. 22 and ended Sunday, Palmer said. State police and Cornell public safety investigators worked with virus experts to analyze the computer bug and trace its origin. In the spring of 1988, Macintosh computers at Cornell were infected by a virus called Scores that made the machines act increasingly erratically, then stop working altogether. - ------- End of Forwarded Message