Senator Bennet from Utah wants to know where the FBI was when the "Love Bug" began circulating through e-mail systems in the USA. I thought I would try to figure out when various different alerts first reached the public from various sources. Although there may be some "private" alerts earlier, I don't have a good way to find out their timestamps. I've tried to normalize all times to UTC. 4-May-2000 10:17 UTC NANOG posting 4-May-2000 12:54 UTC AP (Hong Kong) 4-May-2000 13:17 UTC Reuters(London) 4-May-2000 13:30 UTC ZDNet News 4-May-2000 13:31 UTC F-Secure press release 4-May-2000 14:30 UTC Financial Services Information Sharing Alert 4-May-2000 14:30 UTC CERT/CC Alert 4-May-2000 14:38 UTC Symantec press release 4-May-2000 15:00 UTC FBI/NIPC Alert 4-May-2000 15:05 UTC Computer Associates press release 4-May-2000 16:19 UTC Trend Micro press release I think the FBI did pretty well. In context, the FBI alert came out approximately the same time as most commercial virus vendor press releases. I'm not surprised NANOG beat the FBI or CERT by 4 to 5 hours. But I think I missed some news reports. Does anyone know of any verifiable public alerts or news stories about the "Love Bug" before 1017 UTC?
Although there may be some "private" alerts earlier, I don't have a good way to find out their timestamps. I've tried to normalize all times to UTC.
4-May-2000 10:17 UTC NANOG posting
I guess that's mine, looking at the timestamp on the email I sent :) My source was actually a report of the virus from the BBC's internal email team, which was posted at 10:08 UTC. The report claims that the first occurrence within the BBC was at about 09:00 UTC. I'll forward the report to Sean privately for his information... Simon -- Simon Lockhart | Tel: +44 (0)1737 839676 Internet Engineering Manager | Fax: +44 (0)1737 839516 BBC Internet Services | Email: Simon.Lockhart@bbc.co.uk Kingswood Warren,Tadworth,Surrey,UK | URL: http://support.bbc.co.uk/
My source was actually a report of the virus from the BBC's internal email team, which was posted at 10:08 UTC. The report claims that the first occurrence within the BBC was at about 09:00 UTC.
Actually, re-reading my email folders, 10:08 UTC was the first update. Original report came out at 09:37 UTC. Simon -- Simon Lockhart | Tel: +44 (0)1737 839676 Internet Engineering Manager | Fax: +44 (0)1737 839516 BBC Internet Services | Email: Simon.Lockhart@bbc.co.uk Kingswood Warren,Tadworth,Surrey,UK | URL: http://support.bbc.co.uk/
participants (2)
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Sean Donelan -
Simon Lockhart