Sometimes love hurts. Sometimes it’s just a minor annoyance.
For aerospace companies, the Love Virus was just a one-night stand. By Friday, most companies were back to normal operations with the latest electronic pathogen just a faint memory.
"There were no effects beyond annoyance and amazement at our new global vulnerability to the digital expression of teen angst," said
Spot Image spokesman Clark Nelson.
The Reston, Virginia company’s satellite images were protected from the bug by its special security system. "While this (heavy protection security system) sometimes causes short-term frustration in implementing projects, when it protects us from things like this, it is well worth it," Nelson said.
"Five minutes after I logged on, I got an e-mail saying ‘don’t open anything that says I love you."
It seems, for now, that these assaults are becoming more common. Most companies said that warning notices were posted early and everywhere cautioning employees to avoid the dreaded virus.
Aerospace firms’ information technology (IT) teams seemed to have been clued in to the spread of the bug early in the day Thursday.
At
Space Imaging in Denver, Colorado, the company’s e-mail system and internet connection was shut down to prevent the virus from infiltrating, according to company spokesman Gary Napier.
The company took every precaution to warn employees not to open the virus-infected e-mail. "By 8:00 a.m. (12:00 GMT), there were already mass e-mails and announcements going around the office," Napier said.
If the virus had broken into one of the company’s two servers, it could have been potentially devastating. The company is a leading supplier of millions of images derived from satellites and aerial photography. "Our company is built on JPEGs," Napier said.
"It mostly affected a few personal desktops," he said. The company’s e-mail was still down Friday morning, but was expected to be back up and running later in the day.
At
Raytheon in Lexington, Massachusetts, the virus was contained early.
"Our IT people were on it right away," said company spokesman Dave Polk. "Five minutes after I logged on, I got an e-mail saying ‘don’t open anything that says I love you,'" he said.
As Raytheon employees headed home Thursday, network administrators were installing anti-virus packages to battle future assaults.
In fact, most aerospace firms said that their IT teams are continuing to monitor e-mail throughout the day Friday because of copycat viruses.
One dubbed "very funny" reared its ugly head on Friday. These new bugs can elude anti-virus software potentially causing further damage. Dozens more copycat attacks are expected, security experts said.
The "I Love You" virus spreads through users of Microsoft Outlook and corporate networks that use the Microsoft Exchange e-mail server because it sends a copy of itself to every e-mail address in a recipient's Outlook address book.
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