Friday May 12, 2000

Computer virus derails Read In! By MIKE CONWAY BEE STAFF WRITER (Published: Friday, May 12, 2000)

MERCED -- A mutation of the "ILOVEYOU" computer virus struck many Merced County schools Thursday, leaving their e-mail systems off-line and unplugged.

Peggy Heeler School in Atwater had 125 computers set up to participate in the Internet Read In! and nobody got to chat with the authors because the system was down.

"We were all pretty disappointed," teacher Scott Johnson said. "We did a lot of planning to get ready for the Read In! and then this happened."

"This" was the "joke" version of the "ILOVEYOU" computer bug that affects users of Microsoft Outlook. It comes as an e-mail attachment and when the attachment is opened, the virus starts spreading to everyone listed in the address book.

"It spread like wildfire," Johnson said. The virus was discovered at about 3:30 p.m. Wednesday and teachers and staff at the Atwater Elementary School District worked to squish the bug. "Some of us were up until 3:30 in the morning trying to fix the servers," Johnson said. The troubleshooters went home, changed clothes and returned, trying to fix the system in time for the Read In! The e-mail was still shut off when schools were dismissed for the day.

Like a flu epidemic, the bug visited schools from Los Banos to Snelling. The common link seems to be that virtually all school districts with e-mail in the county share a "global list" -- an address book with everyone's e-mail address.

Gordon Stalling, director of instructional services and public affairs at the Merced County Office of Education, said early research indicated that the bug might have been spread from the county office's system. Thursday morning, Stallings said, "We're getting hordes of messages that are labeled 'joke.' " By the afternoon the virus had been contained, but six people lost data on their computers.

Johnson said the first virus Atwater detected came from the county schools office, and that was the case in Los Banos.

Garth Gomes, the information systems supervisor, said, "It came down from the county (office) and hit all of our servers and within 10 minutes it was all over."

Gomes had one server debugged and running by midafternoon Thursday, but doesn't expect all 12 servers cleaned and the e-mail system running until sometime today.

Gomes said being linked to all other school districts "is more good than bad because we pass so much data. But this is one of the bad things that happens when you're all tied in."

The tiny Snelling-Merced Falls School District received the poisonous attachments, but deleted them and didn't have any problems. The Merced Union High School District had the latest anti-virus software running and had no problems.

"We got off pretty good," said Dave Cecil, the high school district's data processing manager.

http://www.modbee.com/metro/story/0,1113,158408,00.html

-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), May 12, 2000