E-mail virus causes mess for Boeing computers
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The "Goner" computer virus has forced Boeing to shut down some of its e-mail servers in the Puget Sound area for nearly two days, sending thousands of employees scurrying for telephones and fax machines.
An e-mail attachment that replicates itself and deletes the recipient's antivirus software prompted Boeing to halt all e-mails from outside the region early Tuesday afternoon. Boeing technicians were hoping to restart the servers this morning.
This is the longest time Boeing has turned off its servers since a year ago, when Boeing shut them down for four hours after the "Shockwave" virus hit, said Bob Jorgensen, a company spokesman.
Goner spread around the U.S. and Europe so quickly and widely Tuesday that some anti-virus vendors warned it could be the biggest outbreak since last year's "Love Letter" virus. That worm caused an estimated $8.7 billion in damage, according to Computer Economics, which tracks the economic toll of computer viruses.
UK-based e-mail security company MessageLabs reported seeing about 80,000 infections worldwide in 19 countries, with the United States, Great Britain, France and Germany hit the hardest, said Mark Sunner, chief technology officer.
Boeing first detected the virus at 10 Tuesday morning and by 10:30 had alerted its employees not to open the suspect e-mail. The company then searched its servers for signs of infection and found them. Boeing then decided to shut down the servers throughout the region to clean out the virus.
The latest virus "hasn't affected production or design work, but it has been a nuisance," Jorgensen said.
Boeing workers in the Puget Sound area were able to exchange e-mails with each other, but could not communicate with outside companies or with employees at other Boeing locations, such as Southern California and St. Louis. About 75,000 of Boeing's 199,000 workers nationwide work directly with a computer. That means about 30,000 Boeing workers were affected in the Puget Sound area.
Goner arrives as an e-mail under the names of various senders and carries the word "Hi" in the subject field.
The e-mail contains an attachment that appears to be a screen saver. But if users of most versions of Microsoft's Outlook e-mail program open the attachment, the e-mail automatically forwards itself to all the names on the distribution list, which at Boeing can include hundreds of names. It also wipes out the victim's antivirus software.
Boeing's repair efforts are headed by its 12-member computing security team, which deals solely with viruses and hackers. It hoped to have e-mail service up and running again this morning.
In the meantime, "we're going back to faxes and phone calls," Jorgensen said.
Kyung Song can be reached at 206-464-2423 or ksong@seattletimes.com. Reuters news service contributed to this report.