mshamel@tachost.af.mil (SMSgt Michael L. Shamel) (02/13/90)
The following article is from the February 5, 1990 addition of
COMPUTERWORLD. I though the group might be interested.
U.S. RECALLS VIRUS-LADEN CENSUS DISKS.
The Government Printing Office narrowly averted triggering a
nationwide computer virus epidemic late last month after picking
up an infection from the U.S. Census Bureau.
On Jan. 25, the GPO was in the process of mailing packages
containing two floppy disks and a compact disc/read-only memory
disc holding census data to 772 depository libraries scattered
across the country when it learned from the Census Bureau that
one of the two disks had been infected by the Jerusalem virus,
said Jan Erickson, manager of information technologies at the
GPO. The floppy disks contained programs that enabled users to
retrieve data from a CD-ROM disc published by the Census Bureau
containing the County and City Data Book.
The Jerusalem Virus, also known as the Israeli, Hebrew
University and Friday the 13th virus attacks both .COM and .EXE
files on personal computers running under MS-DOS, according to
John McAfee, president of the Computer Virus Industry Association
in Santa Clara, Calif.
The virus repeatedly infects executable files, increasing
them about 1.8K bytes, until the computer's memory is clogged,
McAfee said. In addition to slowing an infected systems, some
versions can destroy data, although that does not appear to have
happened this instance.
"The GPO's [distribution] system allows libraries to choose
the material that they want, and of the 1,400 libraries, 772
chose this disk," Erickson said. "We caught most of the disks
before they went out."
The few libraries that received the disks have not reported
an problems with data being destroyed, she added.
The virus was initially discovered on four stand-alone
computers in the Suitland, Md., office of the Data Users Service
Division of the Census Bureau on Jan. 22 and was eradicated
within 24 hours, said Jim Gorman, a Census Bureau spokesman. It
is still unclear how the four computers were infected, he said.
Two days later, on Jan. 25, the bureau discovered that disks
slated to be distributed by the GPO had been infected with the
same virus, Gorman said.
The disks, however, were not produced by the Census Bureau
but by an outside disk duplication service, Gorman said.
Furthermore, it is not known if the virus was transmitted by the
Census Bureau to its disk supplier.
Gorman said that he did not know the name of the disk
duplicator or what action, if any, the Bureau intended to take
against the firm.
In an alert sent out to its depository librarians, the GPO
said that it and the Census Bureau planned to take "appropriate
measures ... to ensure that it does not happen again." Gorman
said that he did not know what those measures would be.
The virus had no impact on the Census Bureau's preparations
for the 1990 census, Gorman said.
The computer Virus Industry Association has put out an alert
about the virus to its members, warning them that the disk should
be destroyed immediately, McAfee said. The virus is easily
transmitted and can destroy programs, he warned.