FBI Warns of Virus that Dials 911
- — 04 April, 2000 17:01
The FBI's National Infrastructure Protection Center (NIPC) Saturday issued an advisory alerting the public to a "recent and breaking FBI case" involving a self-propagating script that can erase hard drives and dial 911.
According to the advisory, the script searches the Internet for systems set up for file and print sharing and copies itself onto the system. The virus then overwrites the hard drive and prompts the system to dial 911.
The FBI said so far the virus appears to have a "relatively limited dissemination" in the Houston area, where it entered computers through four Internet providers: America Online Inc., AT&T Corp., MCI WorldCom Inc. and NetZero Inc. The virus script may be placed in hidden directories.
An NIPC spokeswoman wouldn't say how many cases of the virus have been reported nor would she offer more details about the ongoing investigation.
