Return to Transcripts main page

NEXT@CNN

Could Computer Viruses Work as Terror Tools?; Extreme X-Rays

Aired January 22, 2005 - 15:00   ET

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

DANIEL SIEBERG, HOST: Hi, I'm Daniel Sieberg. Today on NEXT@CNN, the explosive of choice for many terrorists is readily available at the corner hardware store. Now there's a way to trace those homemade bombs back to their source, so why is it not being used?
Also, could a computer virus work as a terrorist tool? We'll get a reality check on how big the threat is.

And extreme x-rays that raise questions like how could you have a nail in your head for almost a week and not know about it.

All that and more on NEXT.

The attacks of September 11th got many of us thinking of worse scenarios. One of the scariest is terrorists with nuclear weapons. David Mattingly reports on now nuclear terrorism could work and some efforts to prevent in CNN's ongoing "Security Watch" coverage.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DAVID MATTINGLY, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): This is the port of Los Angeles and Long Beach, the nation's biggest container port, 43 percent of all the goods that come into the U.S. by water in shipping containers come through here.

STEPHEN FLYNN, COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS: The port of Los Angeles and Long Beach is arguably not only America's most critical port, but potential the most important in the world.

MATTINGLY: It's one of the single biggest engine driving the U.S. economy a gate way to more than 200 billion dollars in annual trade. With more than 5,000 ships unloading over 9 million cargo containers a year. If the numbers don't impress you consider this -- without this port, store shelves would empty, factories would close and untold thousands would find themselves out of a job.

If terrorists inserted one of their agents somewhere into the long chain of companies involved in sending a product from a factory in south China to the United States, they would be in a position to get a nuclear device into a box. Then onto a container, into the frenzy of commerce heading west, and onto a ship headed for California. The device would not have to detonate to blow a hole in the U.S. economy.

If authorities got a tip about a nuclear device in one of these boxes, they might well shut down the port to find it. Steve Flynn has been banging the drum raising awareness about maritime security he says is deeply vulnerable.

FLYNN: Most Americans that I meet are simply flummoxed by the fact that while we can track -- FAA can track airplanes, it turns out we can't track ships.

MATTINGLY: It's a fool's game.

FLYNN: There are things we could be doing at reasonable costs to rein in this risk. Not to eliminate it, but rein it in.

MATTINGLY: Here the federal government is testing how the agencies would react if a dirty bomb shipped to the U.S. in a container exploded in the port of Los Angeles. The exercise mobilized the FBI, Department of Energy, FEMA, the Coast Guard, customs, the EPA, and defense departments, and an army of local authorities. Similar exercises were held across the country.

FLYNN: Our goal here is to take the lessons of 9/11 where we've seen failings in coordination, command communication, and try to stress those and fix them.

MATTINGLY: In the post-exercise analysis, authorities concluded some things work well. Some things like communications between the 50 agencies involved did not.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hey, chief, we've got five critical that need to be transported. I can't get EMS 6 to answer.

CHIEF NOEL CUNNINGHAM, PORT OF LOS ANGELES POLICE: Well, we know that we're vulnerable and there are gaps, but we're trying to make sure it doesn't happen here. But we believe it will happen.

MATTINGLY: A dirty bomb blowing up in the port, threatening surrounding neighborhoods is one terrible possibility. But there's one much worse. In this scenario, a bomb, similar in size to those used on Japan in World War II comes into the L.A. Port in a container and is loaded onto a truck. The truck drives into downtown Los Angeles and the bomb is detonated by remote control.

MATTHEW MCKENZIE, NATURAL RECOURSES DEF. COUN: Thirty two thousand people would die, these people would die as a result of intense blast, high winds, intense heat radiation from the fireball. A further 160,000 could die as a result of exposure to fallout.

MATTINGLY: Matthew Mckenzie is a physicist working for the National Resources Defense Council. Using the same special software that helps the federal government gauge the impact of a nuclear war, he can create a model for a catastrophe.

Just enter the city, the date and the size of the bomb. A simple point and click for the ultimate terrorist attack.

MCKENZIE: The code shows is a hole basically burned and blasted out of the center of Los Angeles.

MATTINGLY: What about the radiation? MCKENZIE: The radiation, the fallout plume impacts a much larger area of Los Angeles.

MATTHEW BUNN, HARVARD KENNEDY SCHOOL OF GOVT: A nuclear bomb is happened to Hiroshima where an entire city was obliterated in an instant by a single bomb. That's what we're talking about here. Unfortunately it does not take a Manhattan project to make a nuclear bomb. Potentially even a relatively modest cell of reasonably skilled people could put together at least a crude nuclear bomb that would be capable of incinerating the heart of any major city in the world.

MATTINGLY: Any city like Los Angeles, or maybe New York, or Washington, D.C., the cities attacked on September 11th.

BUNN: No one, of course, can reliably calculate the probability of a nuclear terrorist attack in the United States, but I believe it's likely enough that it significantly reduces the life expectancy of everyone who lives and works in downtown Washington, D.C. or New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SIEBERG: Well, while the devastation from non-nuclear explosives wouldn't be as extreme, those are even easier to come by. They've already been used by terrorists in the U.S. as well as overseas.

Now, there's a way to build a chemical fingerprint into one common ingredient used in bombs that could lead authorities to the source. I spent time with a scientist who helped develop it in New Mexico.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DALE SPALL, NANOTECHNOLOGIST: My dad started me fly-fishing when I was six, before that I was a bait fisherman. I generally fish where there aren't any people. So it's the solitude, the smell of the river's nice, too.

SIEBERG (voice-over): To see him cast his line on the Rio Grande in this prestige part of New Mexico you wouldn't suspect Dale Spall works at the crossroads of science and security.

SPALL: A lot of guys in the original Manhattan project would come down here during a break and sit around next to the river where it was fairly cool.

SIEBERG: Dale's fishing spot is just a few miles from where the atomic bomb was invented, Loss Alamos National Laboratory, the brain trust for the nations defense and a place Dale worked for more than 20 years. He says there's a parallel between science and fishing.

SPALL: You spend a lot of your time casting, a little bit of your time catching, and most of the time they're not very big.

SIEBERG: Dale's work isn't big in a literal sense. In fact it's one of the tiniest nanny technologies used in homeland security, nanotechonology. You can't even see it under a microscope. SPALL: Micron is 1/150th smaller than a particle of a hair. And there's would be one trillion of those -- there is approximately a trillion in this vial.

SIEBERG: Dale is holding a sample of ammonium nitrate, ordinary fertilizer for farmers and a common ingredient in explosives.

SPALL: This is the explosive of choice for terrorists. This is what formed almost all of the IRA's explosions in Ireland and England. This is what caused Oklahoma City.

SIEBERG: What you can't see here is Dale's creation, more than a trillion tiny tracer molecules chemically attached to these little white spheres. Even after an explosion, molecules attach to the pearls survive the blast. Dale's stubborn molecules would have helped investigators in Oklahoma City. The tracers he invented can act as invisible tattletales for whom ever tries to build a bomb.

SPALL: These are nanoparticles that we make.

SIEBERG: Tracers can be added during manufacture and like a chemical fingerprint, they can make each batch unique.

SPALL: You can trace this back to which plant it was made, when it was made and all the way down the distribution point to where it was sold. If you remember in the Oklahoma City we're tracking that by tracking to track the sales receipts. They finally found a sales receipt, but that was only after thousands of man hours of checking all the possible places where it could have been bought.

SIEBERG: I just purchased this 50-pound bag of ammonite at a local hardware store, it is about enough to blow a tree stump out of the front yard, which is a fairly common use. Anyone can buy this stuff at more than 10,000 outlets in the U.S alone. If the material had molecular tracers in it, you wouldn't need a receipt to track down the buyer, but at present, manufacturers are not required to put the tracers in their product.

The last report on this topic from the National Academy of Sciences released seven years ago concludes that additives that improve detection of explosives before detonation or determine their origins after a blast are not yet practical enough for broad use in the United States. Does it frustrate you in some way that it is not being implemented in these situations?

SPALL: Oh definitely, yes. It's a perfectly good solution. It just hasn't been implemented for a wide variety of reasons. A lot of the stuff we do ends up that way. It's deemed too expensive.

SIEBERG: Not because the technology itself is expensive, adding only three to seven cents per ton, but because of the extensive paperwork that would be required. Dale is now with a private company Authentix, and some of its technology is being used in airport security.

SPALL: Over here are the IMS protramiters (ph) that we use -- SIEBERG: These are high-tech sniffers.

SPALL: These are high tech sniffers, this is what's used in the airports.

SIEBERG: It sounds like it's the tiniest defense.

SPALL: Yes, it is, but it's also the most effective.

SIEBERG: Dale spent the better part of 30 years here, and he believes strongly that science of all sizes helps the nation stay one step ahead in a dangerous world.

SPALL: People that work at the National Laboratory basically feel that this is something that they are doing for the security of the country. It's not just a job, it's more than that. I know it sounds corny, but 15,000 people up here believe that, and I'm one of them.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SIEBERG: Stay tuned to CNN day and night for the most reliable news and about your security.

ANNOUNCER: Coming up, a spectacular launch for a plane that has yet to try its wings.

And later in the show why did the blowfish go to the dentist? No it's not a riddle. It really happened this week.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SIEBERG: Airbus the European aircraft company this week unrevealed the largest commercial jet ever. The Airbus a-380, super jumbo appropriately named debuted with more glitz than a rock concert at a ceremony in Toulouse, France, attended by four heads of state and dozens of airline CEO's. It hasn't flown yet, the first test flight is planned for the spring. The A-380 will carry more than 500 passengers, and some will include a bar, a gym, a beauty salon and beds. It is the latest in the long line of biggest and best jets, as Richard Quest reports in this week's "Getting There" segment.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

RICHARD QUEST, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): Before the jets arrived, this was the golden age of flying, when crossing the world took days, not hours. It gave a certain comfort and style for those who could afford it. Then arrived the jets, and with them larger planes. By 1969, it seemed, big had to be beautiful. The 747 was certainly big. Initially passengers had been frightened, wondering if it was too big and heavy to fly.

They soon grew to love the behemoth which even had lounges and bars for it's first class elite. And airlines clamored to buy, needing the extra seats for a booming air travel. Now Airbus has outsized Boeing, the super-jumbo, costing a quarter of a billion each. JOHN LEAHY, CEO, AIRBUS: Passengers preferred, given a choice to be on the 747, because it had more space. Airlines preferred the 747 because it had lower costs. Fast-forward to 2005/2006, we enter service. You have a choice, you're going to Hong Kong or Tokyo to do a story, you have a choice of going on a 747 or that airplane, what will you do?

QUEST: Airbus says the plane is essentially to make the best use of tight airspace and crowded airports. So the 380 will find its home on congested routes, such as London to Singapore, Sydney to Hong Kong. Boeing believes it's all a folly that today's passengers wants loads of possible flights, not just one big plane a day.

And, anyway, most international routes can't fill 500 or more seats at a time. Whoever is right, the arrival of the a380 sends the original jumbo jet on its way, not quite into retirement. There are many hundreds in the air, with years still to fly, but the baton has been passed, the super-jumbo is a plane coming to an airport near you.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Coming up, we'll meet a man whose mission in life is saving sick and injured sea turtles.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SIEBERG: We've told you how an iceberg is threatening the survival of tens of thousands of penguin chicks in Antarctica. Well now we have video and satellite photos of the big berg, it's called the B15a iceberg. And it broke off the Ross ice shelf five years ago. Recently it came to block the Micmerdal (ph) sound and that is making it difficult for thousands of penguins to bring food to their chicks. Because of the blockage, they have to walk up to 112 miles to get to the sea and back. The long trip means they have to eat much of the food intended for their young.

The nation's shorelines are in questionable condition and that is according to the 2005 National Coastal Conditional Report released this week. Four government agencies produced the report aimed at assessing the health of U.S. coastal environments and their ability to meet the needs of humans and wildlife. The report concludes that with over 53 percent of the U.S. population living near a coast, development pollution runoff, tourism and other human pressures are squeezing the life out of shorelines and estuaries, of the areas assessed 44 percent were rated as threatened or fair. While 35 percent were in poor or in fair condition.

Well, sea turtles are one of the animals affected by all that human activity on the coast. And one man in the Florida Keys has made it his life's work to rehabilitate sick and injured turtles. John Zarrella has his story in this week's "Our Planet" segment.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

RICH MORETTI, TURTLE HOSPITAL DIRECTOR: This one's going to live another 95, 100 years. JOHN ZARRELLA, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): Rich Moretti fell in love when he came to the Florida Keys 20 years ago.

MORETTI: This is a nice healthy turtle and like I say it the rarest turtle in the world.

ZARRELLA: He felt in love with sea turtles. Not sunsets and laid back lifestyles weren't an attraction too but the endangered reptile needed a champion and Moretti a one-time Volkswagen mechanic with no veterinarian training felt he was the guy.

MORETTI: This makes me feel good about what I do and about myself.

ZARRELLA: In 1986 Moretti opened the turtle hospital in Marathon about half way down the Keys. Since then the staff, mostly volunteers, have been treating sick turtles like Runt.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: He has an infection, if you can see, if his front flipper.

ZARRELLA: Turtles run over by boats, others that swallowed hooks or got tangled in fishing lines.

MORETTI: Now this one if you notice, he has a very clean amputation and got tangled up in fishing line, so this turtle will live the next 95 years with one flipper missing.

ZARRELLA: Moretti has funded the hospitals with the profits from a hotel he bought when he moved here. Now he wants to add staff and conduct more research. So for the first time educational tours are going offered to the public.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I can't way to show the pictures to my best friend Melissa because her favorite animal is sea turtles.

ZARRELLA: The tours are available everyday but subject to cancellations if there's a turtle emergency. In the 18 years the hospital has been open, 750 turtles have been rehabilitated and released. The latest, a loggerhead named plantation.

MORETTI: On three, one, two, three.

ZARRELLA: After 18 months recovering from a life-threatening infection, plantation is heading back to sea. The Coast Guard plays a major role, transporting plantation to a spot near the seven mile bridge where she's released.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Here she goes. Good luck, kiddo.

ZARRELLA: For the hospital staff, this is the payoff, a turtle that most certainly would have died gets a second chance.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Nice job, guys.

(END VIDEOTAPE) UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Coming up in our next half hour, we'll show you some of the coolest stuff from the recent consumer electronics show.

And some of the weirdest stuff that's turned up on x-rays over the years. Those stories and a lot more coming up after the break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SIEBERG: Welcome back to NEXT@CNN. You know, two weeks ago, we planned to bring you our show from the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, but that was preempted by breaking news and last week we focused exclusively on extremes of nature. But, don't despair; we don't want you to miss seeing all those new gadgets and gizmos, so better late than never. And one of the main attractions this year was the largest TV in the world. Samsung's 102-inch plasma television is not in production and there's not a price tag on it yet, but most likely you'll need deep pockets and a rather large living room to accommodate it.

Now check on you more sights and sounds of CES.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SUSANNE KANTRA, "POPULAR SCIENCE": For instance, we're starting off with the Kodak Easyshare-One. It's a digital camera, four megapixels, but it has a WiFi card built into it. So if you're on vacation, so into a Starbucks or any other establishment that has a broadband connection and you with share your photos right from your vacation. You can also browse albums that already on the web, right from your camera.

BRIAN COOLEY, CNET: It's called the Ojo from Motorola. We've go Herschel here from Motorola, over in their offices over in L.A,

Hi, Herschel.

HERSCHEL, MOTOROLA: Hi, how are you?

COOLEY: Good, now he's with us live right now. All this is powered by a broadband connection, like DSL or a cable broadband connection. It's taken 25 years to get this right. These things have been on the market since the 70s.

SIEBERG: Yeah, they've been taking about it forever, right?

COOLEY: Exactly, I mean they had them on the market for a while, they never worked. This one works great. You can see we're in full motion, 30 frames per sect, which is TV quality, nice, smooth motion. You see Herschel moving there, it doesn't look jittery. It also built in what they call a VOIP phone so it'll make phone calls over that broadband connection. That means free long distance and cheap phone service. And it's also got a detachable cordless handset for the call.

SIEBERG: And, of course, it helps if someone else has one as well...

COOLEY: You've got to have someone else with the same product. Yeah. That's very important.

SIEBERG: All right.

KANTRA: This is something that's been highly anticipated for over a year, it's a Playstation portable, as you mentioned. It I plays wonderful game, a lot of them based on Playstation titles, but in addition to that, you're going to also be able to watch movies, listen to music, share photos, all for probably around $200 when it comes out in the spring. So when you compare it to other devices, this will be a real bargain.

SIEBERG: All right.

JANE CHEN, CNET: This is actually a palm PDA as well. So, it's not just a watch, but a PDA and it includes a little stylus here, tucked into the watchband, and it works...

SIEBERG: You've got to be careful not to lose that.

CHEN: Right, oh absolutely, yeah. Although it still works without it, you know you can touch the screen and everything.

SIEBERG: Touch screen.

CHEN: And it's a pretty basic PDA, it's not as high-end as the Garmen PDA.

SIEBERG: No wireless or WiFi or anything like that?

CHEN: Exactly, nothing like that, but -- and Fassel's actually aiming towards getting new PDA users, non-existing users to, you know, buy this as a second PDA.

MICHAEL MILLER, "PC" MAGAZINE: Well, these are called the Oakley Thump sunglasses. And not only are they sunglasses, but as you can see, they've got little earpieces in here, it's an MP3 players. So you hit a button and you can it the songs that you want to hear and see what's going on.

CHEN: This is a portable media player and what it does it, it's got a 20 gigabyte hard drive in it and it stores your videos, your music, you photos, and it will play a video for you, you know, play all your videos. What's great about this one is that even though it has a big screen 3.5 inch screen, it's pretty light and it'll take any A/V input -- A/V source input. So, you can just report straight off your TV or DVD player, whatever. It also has an empty slot on the top so you can put photos directly into it.

LANCE ULANOFF, "PC" MAGAZINE: This is great because this a cold heat souldering iron 1995. It gets to 800 degrees in under a second and goes back to room temperatures in about two seconds,

SIEBERG: All right, so let's do it. ULANOFF: And it won't burn your hands.

SIEBERG: We're going to do a (UNINTELLIGIBLE) safe demonstration.

ULANOFF: Yes, we're going to do fairly safe -- and we'll give it the red light says that's it's now heating the solder, as you see that smoke there. So now it's done.

SIEBERG: And a typical soldering iron, you could not to do that.

ULANOFF: An you'd better not do what I just did on a typical soldering iron. This is a composite material that uses the heat and then dissipates it immediately, available at Radio Shack and Walgreen's, now.

JIM LOUDERBACK, EXTREMETECH.COM: Now take a look. Now, this is a $600 player, but it has the ability to show off and video. The screen right here is called OLED, organic LED. First time we're seen one of these screens in a portable device. It's flexible, it uses less battery light, and boy, the quality is so much better than LCD. It looks so good.

SIEBERG: And we can see that OLED technology in other devices down the line.

LOUDERBACK: We'll see it in more devices, and we may see it in TVs a couple years ago down the road.

SIEBERG: Oh, yeah.

LOUDERBACK: Notebook computers, very interesting technology.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ANNOUNCER: When we come back, a year after NASA's Mars rovers began creeping across the red planet, they're still going strong. We'll take a look at what they've found.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SIEBERG: The European Space Agency said this week its Huygens space probe apparently landed in mud when it came to rest on Saturn's moon, Titan. The agency also said Huygens rocked and twisted as it fell to Titan's surface. Scientists believe Huygens landed at the shoreline of a large body of liquid, possibly methane. The probe landed on Titan just over a week ago, after being launched from Cassini spacecraft that's orbiting Saturn.

Sticking with space news, believe it or not, it's been a year since NASA's first Mars rover arrived on the red planet, followed a few weeks later by its twin. And "Spirit" and "Opportunity" are still amazing their handlers on earth. Miles O'Brien has the story.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Red rovers, red rovers, when will it be over?

MATT GOLOMBEK, JET PROPULSION LAB: They were designed for three months and so they're well past their warranty.

O'BRIEN: Now a year since NASA's Mar exploration team celebrated a 2-for-2 slam dunk on the surface of the red planet, and their $800 million rovers, "Spirit" and "Opportunity" are still at it, meandering over rust-tinted hill and dale, drilling holes, analyzing rocks and dirt, and sending back some astonishing postcards.

STEVE SQUYRES, CORNELL UNIVERSITY: It was an accumulation, a growing body of evidence, and gradually the story came into focus.

O'BRIEN: These tiny concrete-like spheres, about the size of BBs, these layer cake sedimentary rocks, and their telltale ingredients all lead to an irrefutable conclusion, billions of years ago, Mars was warm and wet, probably covered with oceans. The question, were there any fish in the sea, so to speak?

SQUYRES: But, this provided a medium that would have been a suitable environment for life to develop in and to inhabit, potentially.

GOLOMBEK: So it begs the question of whether there was a second genesis, did life form somewhere else besides the earth?

O'BRIEN(on camera): "Spirit" and "Opportunity" are not equipped to answer that question definitive. A lander that collects Martian rocks and then returns them to earth may get scientists closer to that Holy Grail. Right now, NASA doesn't have a mission like that on the books, but the success of these rovers might change that soon.

(voice-over): In the meantime, "Spirit" and "Opportunity" roll on like Martian Energizer bunnies. Their solar arrays aren't covered with nearly as much dust as engineers guessed, so there is plenty of power, Captain. But the team that drives them know they are one failure away from the end of this Star Trek.

SQUYRES: We're planning for hundreds of days of operations, but each day we drive literally like there's no tomorrow.

O'BRIEN: "Opportunity" is now headed for an inspection of the heat shield it jettisoned as it entered Mars, a year ago. "Spirit" is trolling for more signs of water in the Columbia hills, but whatever they find now might as well be gravy.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ANNOUNCER: Coming up: Who writes computer viruses and why? How can you protect your computer? We get some answers from a man who spends his life tracking viruses.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SIEBERG: A suburban Atlanta school district says it will appeal a federal judge's order to remove stickers from science books that say evolution is a theory, not a fact. Cobb County school board members said the order amounts to unnecessary judicial intrusion into local control of schools. The teaching of evolution is also a bone of contention in Pennsylvania's Dover Area school districts. Administrators, this week, read a statement to biology classes about, quote, "intelligent design" as an alternative to evolution.

"Intelligent design" maintains that the universe is so complex a guiding force must have created it. Civil libertarians have filed suit, calling "intelligent design" a variation of "creationism," a view that god created life as it exists today.

Moving on now, one of the aspects of keeping our nation secure from terrorism: The ever-present threat of computer viruses. It can do a whole lot more than mess up a PC's hard drive. Veronica De La Cruz has the report on the virus writers and the people who hunt them.

VERONICA DE LA CRUZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): In Hollywood, battles over the computer frontier look like this, complete with gunfights, and high-speed car chases, but real-life computer crime fighters are people like David Perry, who sings and collects vintage vinyl. This musician, former hippy, self-proclaim geek.

DAVID PERRY, VIRUS HUNTER: Here's a book comparing the creation of viruses to the creations of life?

DE LA CRUZ: Is the go-to guy virus tracker for computer security giant, Trend Micro.

PERRY: As an antivirus guy, I feel like I'm fighting evil. You know? I'm kind of -- I'm not really the caped crusader, more like the Dr. X of the antivirus world.

DE LA CRUZ: And the fight's gotten more complicated for Dr. X, and about three-quarters of a million people in the computer security world.

PERRY: "Michelangelo" virus took a year to spread around the world. The "Melissa" viruses took hours to spread around the world. Network viruses like "Code Red" or "Slammer" or "Sasser" are able to spread all over the world in a matter of nine or ten minutes.

DE LA CRUZ (on camera): Super-fast viruses can be more than an inconvenience for PC users. They can infiltrate banking systems, airline reservation programs, on-line stock trading, retail and auction sites, even police and fire response systems, and the attacks have already begun.

PERRY: In Japan, a couple of years ago, one of the first cell phone viruses was called "DoCoMo 9/11" it turned off the screen, turned off the keypad, turned off the ringer, and then your phone would dial emergency phone services, over and over again, real fast. When it infected about 100,000 phones, it shut down emergency phone services in Tokyo.

DE LA CRUZ (voice-over): Since 9/11, some have predicted a cyber Pearl Harbor, a computer attack that brings down airplanes, power grids, the phone systems.

PERRY: Our government and many governments all over the world have gone to great length to secure the critical infrastructure in power, in transportation, medicine. I really think that terrorists could get a lot more effective use out buying some other kind of a weapon than a computer at this point in time.

DE LA CRUZ: Still viruses are getting easier and easier to create.

(on camera): But you don't have to be a rocket scientist?

PERRY: No. I could teach you how to write a virus in half hour.

DE LA CRUZ (voice-over): And the law is surprisingly easy on the people who create them. In the United States, virus writing is not a crime, because computer code is considered free speech covered by the first amendment. But Perry says governments need to pass laws that deal with the damage malicious code can cause. In the Philippines, the creator of the costly "Love Letter" virus was not prosecuted.

PERRY: After they arrested Arnold de Guzman, they had no law to prosecute him with. They didn't have a law against computer crime.

DE LA CRUZ: Human nature also plays a part. Remember the "Anna Kournikova" virus, thought to contain naked pictures of the tennis star? Even after it was well-known that it was a virus, people kept clicking.

PERRY: There's not one profile of a computer virus writer. They're not all punk-rockers, they're not all kids. David smith was 30 years old.

DE LA CRUZ: Smith wrote the "Melissa" virus, naming it after a stripper. He got caught bragging about it in a chatroom and served 20 months in prison.

(on camera): Perry says that corporate America could use an attitude adjustment when it comes to fighting computer intrusion, a little less focus on their own P.R. and a little more on yelling at bad guys.

PERRY: If you're a corporation and you're hacked, and somebody comes in and steals $500 million or $20 or everybody's credit card number, right? For god's sakes, file charges, press suits. You know, this is a crime. This person shouldn't get away just because you would be embarrassed to have the world know, you know, that this is going on. DE LA CRUZ (voice-over): Virtually any size computer anywhere in your home or car is vulnerable. Your TiVo, Blackberry, cell phone, even your speakers. While security computers companies and local Internet providers are the primary gatekeepers, ultimately it's up to the individual users to protect themselves. Passwords, credit card numbers, all their private information.

PERRY: You should have a hardware firewall, you should have a personal firewall, you should be running anti-virus software, you might want to run antispyware checking. It's harder than it's been in a while, because the number of threats is proliferating rapidly.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SIEBERG: Coming up, x-rays that make you ask: How did that get in there?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SIEBERG: So this guy walks into a dentist's office carrying a blowfish -- no, it's not the start of a bad joke, but the story of a concerned pet owner in Phoenix. Christina Estes from our affiliate KNXV has the story.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CHRISTINA ESTES, KNXV REPORTER: Her restaurant is called Pischke's Paradise, but things are less than perfect for Pischke's blowfish.

CHRIS PISCHKE, FISH DINER: He gets moody.

ESTES: You'd get moody, too, if you couldn't eat.

PISCHKE: In the wild they chew on the live coral to get the nutrients and that keeps her teeth filed down.

ESTES: But Zorro has no live coral to munch on and his teeth keep growing.

PISCHKE: You can tell when he has a hard time eating because he'll grab the clam and they'll get caught in the teeth, because he can't open it far enough to release it.

ESTES: So it's time for Zorro to visit the dentist.

PISCHKE: He knows something's going to happen.

ESTES: Chris Pischke fills a bucket and grabs his friend.

PISCHKE: He knows I'm helping him.

ESTES: That help is behind the door. And just like any other patient, Zorro must wait a few minutes.

PISCHKE: I offered him a magazine, but he wasn't interested. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yeah, he wasn't interested.

ESTES: Everyone's interested in Zorro.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Oh, he's bigger than I thought he would be.

PISCHKE: In the ocean they get to be four feet.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Really?

PISCHKE: Oh, yeah.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Oh my god.

ESTES: Just a few feet away the drill is ready.

DR. BRIAN DOLBERG, DENTIST: There's no sensation, there's no feeling there. It's like trimming his fingernails, but he's got very think fingernails.

ESTES: Pischke holds Zorro.

(UNINTELLIGIBLE)

ESTES: While Dr. Brian Dolberg gets to work. Zorro is the only non-human among his patients, though his did consider a dog once.

DOLBERG: I was actually at cleaning a dog's teeth before, but she wouldn't tolerate it and it's easy to pay the veterinarian to do it.

ESTES: Every few minutes, Pischke puts Zorro back into the water.

PISCHKE: Because he gets agitated.

ESTES: And soon you notice a difference. After about 30 minutes, a gap emerges.

DOLBERG: You can see now where we cut through it.

ESTES: After about 30 minutes, a gap emerges.

PISCHKE: That's a real set of chompers.

ESTES: Pictures are taken and then Zorro is taken home. We're not positive, but we think he might be smiling.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SIEBERG: This is actually the second time that Zorro has had his teeth filed. The dentist doesn't send a bill; instead he gets a few complimentary meals at the restaurant. Pretty good deal.

Meanwhile at dentist's office in Littleton, Colorado, they took an astonishing x-ray last week. Jeanne Moos reports on that case and some other oddball x-rays.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JEANNE MOOS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Hey doc, I'm having pain in my mouth.

Maybe it's the nail lodged in your head.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: There it is.

PATRICK LAWLER, PATIENT: Yeah, I always consider myself lucky.

MOOS: Construction worker Patrick Lawler's nail gun backfired, but he thought he whacked himself. A tooth ache and blurry vision finally prompted him to get an x-ray six days later. But what's an itty-bitty nail anyway when this Pennsylvania woman went grocery shopping with a knife sticking out of the back of her neck and there's surveillance tape in the store to prove it. Earlier a passerby stabbed Shirley Petrich only she didn't realize it.

SHIRLEY PETRICH, STABBING VICTIM: I thought he had thrown a stone to hit me.

MOOS: So she continued to the store. You'd think someone have mentioned, hey, look that those nice peaches, and by the way, there's a knife in your neck. But, it wasn't until she got home that her daughter yanked it out.

PETRICH: I was dumbfounded.

MOOS: But even a knife pales next to this. Back in 1848, an explosion hurdled this iron bar through Finneus Gauge's skull. In through his left cheek out the top of his head.

DON GIBBONS, HARVARD UNIVERSITY: He survived the injury, but his personality changed dramatically afterwards.

MOOS: For the worse. They didn't have x-rays back then, but now all sorts of medical mishaps are documented, from the retractor accidentally left behind during an operation, to the kitchen knife that a dog somehow swallowed. And then there was the sheepdog used as a drug currier, ten condoms filled with cocaine...

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There's one...

MOOS: ...were implanted in her belly. Not to be confused with a golf ball dog. Hanna loved chasing golf balls.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Was that in your belly?

MOOS: The vet removed nine of them. No more fetch for Hanna. She can only salivate over the thought of the golf course as a main course.

For dessert, imagine swallowing steel. Here at the Sword Swallowers' Convention, they swallow anything with a handle and asked me to pull it out.

MOOS (on camera): (UNINTELLIGIBLE)

(voice-over): Even sword swallowers like to take x-rays, just don't make them say "cheese."

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SIEBERG: Not to put too fine a point on it, but there's really nothing I can say at this point.

That's all the time we have for now, but here's what's coming up next week:

This historic ship, almost a century old, came close to ending up in the dumpster. We'll show you how it was rescued, and how it will be restored.

That's coming up on NEXT. Until then, let's hear from you. You can send us an e-mail at next@cnn.com. And don't forget to check out our Web site, that's at cnn.com/next.

Thanks so much for joining us, for all of us, I'm Daniel Sieberg, we'll see you next time.

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