Jul 18, 2000 - 06:44 PM

Virus Strikes State Department Computers at Peace Summit By D. Ian Hopper Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) - State Department computer equipment being used in the Mideast peace talks to route, send and receive e-mail was struck by a virus over the weekend, clogging computers with junk messages. Unclassified computers used by the State Department's public diplomacy section were affected by the virus, taking hold during the weekend. The virus, called Stages, sent itself out to journalists and other people in the contact lists of infected State Department users.

The Stages virus doesn't destroy any files, but multiplies itself endlessly and can make infected companies shut down their mail distribution servers. A State Department spokeswoman had no specific information regarding the effects of this infection.

Interscan, an antivirus program made by Cupertino, Calif.-based Trend Micro that was designed to stop such attacks, went down sometime during the weekend, said State Department spokeswoman Julie Reside.

The breakdown allowed the infection to travel through the Internet gateway and affect the servers. The department's other classified and unclassified servers were not affected, she said.

Reside said that State technicians cleaned up the infection on Monday, though iDefense, a security company in Alexandria, Va., has received a report that the infection continued into Tuesday.

Dan Schrader, chief security analyst at Trend Micro, said company officials had not received details of the attack.

iDefense Manager of Intelligence Production Ben Venzke said having redundant protection systems is important.

"As this demonstrates, if just one program goes down for a brief period, it doesn't take much to bring about some damaging and costly consequences," he said.

In June, the Stages virus caused four Fortune 100 companies to shut down their e-mail systems.

Security experts believe a virus writer calling himself "Zulu" created Stages, which looks like a harmless text file when it's actually a dangerous program. Zulu, who is believed to be based in Argentina, has created several other viruses in the past, Schrader said.

http://ap.tbo.com/ap/breaking/MGIDDT15UAC.html

-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), July 18, 2000