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CNN Saturday Morning News

Virus-Like Attack Slows The Internet

Aired January 25, 2003 - 07:38   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: All right. Another story to tell you about this morning. An Internet virus is winding its way through the Web as we speak. We don't know how bad it is yet, but we're told it is akin to some of the more serious viruses we've seen over the recent years.
Let's get an expert on the line. Oliver Friedrichs, he's a senior manager at Symantec Corporation, a company that knows a lot about the Internet. Mr. Friedrichs, good to have you with us.

OLIVER FRIEDRICHS, SENIOR MANAGER, SYMANTEC CORPORATION: Great to have you too.

O'BRIEN: All right. Tell us about the virus. Tell us what we need to do to keep our computers safe.

FRIEDRICHS: Well at around 3:30 Eastern Standard Time this morning we started seeing worm-like activity on the Internet. Through a system that we monitor, called the deep site (ph) threat management system, which is really -- it's an early warning system, where we detect attacks as they're starting to come out on the Internet. We started seeing a sharp increase of activity targeting Microsoft sequel servers.

The worm itself was using attacks that were almost six months old now. And Microsoft had actually issued patches almost six months now to the day for these vulnerabilities.

O'BRIEN: But could you back up, Mr. Friedrichs? What's a Microsoft sequel server and how does that relate to our world?

FRIEDRICHS: A Microsoft sequel server is something that enterprises and companies really use more so to store information. It's really a database technology.

O'BRIEN: OK. And what is this -- this virus attacks those servers and does what?

FRIEDRICHS: The virus really attacks the server, it breaks into the server, and then it really just tries to spread. So the virus itself doesn't contain any malicious (UNINTELLIGIBLE). But the real harm that it does is that when it breaks into the database server it really generates a lot of additional network traffic as it tries to propagate and break into additional servers. O'BRIEN: So what we'll see at home potentially are slowdowns as we try to search the Web? Will we see some of those annoying e-mails? Or is this strictly something that will slow down Internet performance?

FRIEDRICHS: It's really just going to slow down Internet performance. You're not really going to see any additional e-mail. Really, it's going to effect some of the core routers and infrastructure that networks operate on.

O'BRIEN: How bad could it be? Could it bring the Internet down?

FRIEDRICHS: I think that when we look at this threat, compared to some of the other threats, it's not as significant simply because the number of deployed servers aren't that significant as those that could (UNINTELLIGIBLE), for example, which is the previous one.

O'BRIEN: We remember that well. All right. Oliver Friedrichs, Symantec Corporation, thanks for your insights. Keep up posted, and let us know how this worm unfolds on the Internet today.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com







Aired January 25, 2003 - 07:38   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: All right. Another story to tell you about this morning. An Internet virus is winding its way through the Web as we speak. We don't know how bad it is yet, but we're told it is akin to some of the more serious viruses we've seen over the recent years.
Let's get an expert on the line. Oliver Friedrichs, he's a senior manager at Symantec Corporation, a company that knows a lot about the Internet. Mr. Friedrichs, good to have you with us.

OLIVER FRIEDRICHS, SENIOR MANAGER, SYMANTEC CORPORATION: Great to have you too.

O'BRIEN: All right. Tell us about the virus. Tell us what we need to do to keep our computers safe.

FRIEDRICHS: Well at around 3:30 Eastern Standard Time this morning we started seeing worm-like activity on the Internet. Through a system that we monitor, called the deep site (ph) threat management system, which is really -- it's an early warning system, where we detect attacks as they're starting to come out on the Internet. We started seeing a sharp increase of activity targeting Microsoft sequel servers.

The worm itself was using attacks that were almost six months old now. And Microsoft had actually issued patches almost six months now to the day for these vulnerabilities.

O'BRIEN: But could you back up, Mr. Friedrichs? What's a Microsoft sequel server and how does that relate to our world?

FRIEDRICHS: A Microsoft sequel server is something that enterprises and companies really use more so to store information. It's really a database technology.

O'BRIEN: OK. And what is this -- this virus attacks those servers and does what?

FRIEDRICHS: The virus really attacks the server, it breaks into the server, and then it really just tries to spread. So the virus itself doesn't contain any malicious (UNINTELLIGIBLE). But the real harm that it does is that when it breaks into the database server it really generates a lot of additional network traffic as it tries to propagate and break into additional servers. O'BRIEN: So what we'll see at home potentially are slowdowns as we try to search the Web? Will we see some of those annoying e-mails? Or is this strictly something that will slow down Internet performance?

FRIEDRICHS: It's really just going to slow down Internet performance. You're not really going to see any additional e-mail. Really, it's going to effect some of the core routers and infrastructure that networks operate on.

O'BRIEN: How bad could it be? Could it bring the Internet down?

FRIEDRICHS: I think that when we look at this threat, compared to some of the other threats, it's not as significant simply because the number of deployed servers aren't that significant as those that could (UNINTELLIGIBLE), for example, which is the previous one.

O'BRIEN: We remember that well. All right. Oliver Friedrichs, Symantec Corporation, thanks for your insights. Keep up posted, and let us know how this worm unfolds on the Internet today.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com