[ILUG] Morning Ireland piece on MyDoom virus

[Gavin McCullagh]

Hi,

On Mon, 02 Feb 2004, Peter Aherne wrote:

> On Mon, 02 Feb 2004, Gavin McCullagh said the following:
> > On Mon, 02 Feb 2004, Breathnach, Proinnsias (Dublin) wrote:
> > 
> > > http://www.rte.ie/news/2004/0202/morningireland/morningireland5a.smil
> > > 
> > > Is the link ... anyone got the time to transcribe ?
> > 
> > I'll do it over lunch, if that's early enough.  If someone else is working
> > on it let mw know and I won't bother.
> > 
> 
> Here is a partial transcript, I skipped the intro about what a worm is
> etc...I paticularly like his explanation of why SCO was targetted...

Well that'll teach me to do things earlier than I said I would!  Here's
mine.


############################################################################
Transcript of Morning Ireland's piece about the MyDoom email virus.  
Aired live on RTE Radio 1 at 7:45am approx, Monday 2nd February 2003.

http://www.rte.ie/news/2004/0202/morningireland/morningireland5a.smil
############################################################################

David Hanley: 'The fastest spreading email worm in history' is how internet
security experts describe the so-called 'MyDoom' email worm.  The MyDoom email
worm was primed to attack S-C-O's website on Sunday.  The experts say it'll
move on to target Microsoft Corporation tomorrow.  S-C-O's website www.sco.com
remained offline last night.  'A large scale Denial of Service attack has
started that has made the company's website www.sco.com completely unavailable,'
the S-C-O said in a statement.  

Now, we're joined in the centre city studio by the director of BUI Training,
computer expert William Campbell.

William Campbell: Good morning.

DH: Good morning William Campbell.

WC: Good morning.

DH: Would you explain to me on behalf of others as ignorant as I am about email
and all to do with it, what is an email worm? 

WC: An email worm is, is a computer virus and a computer virus is a program
that runs like Microsoft Word on your computer but it's one that got on there
when you didn't want it to get on, em, usually by some sureptitious means, by
somebody em, em, em sending it to you and getting it onto your computer like
that.

DH: How does it manifest itself?

WC: Em, it's possible you mightn't notice at all.  But, if your friends have
this you're probably getting lots of strange emails eh, from people who are,
who are, eh, perhaps familiar to you, with an attachment saying 'Please open
this attachment'.  Now, those emails are coming from the virus on somebody
else's computer and if you open that then you'll probably be caught.

DH: How?

WC: Em, the reason you'll be caught is because that will then install a little
program on your computer and if you're connected to the internet --- which you
probably are if you have email --- then your computer will be taken over like a
zombie and will act as though you're trying to get through to this S-C-O
website and make millions of requests for information from it and the
cumulative effect of this, it's like em, a million people ringing the RTE
switchboard number at the same time.  It'll just knock out the system.   

DH: So you'll be completely disabled.

WC: Em, no. The, the website will be completely disabled. You'll be...

DH: The website, I mean.

WC: Yes, yes.  and, and effectively that's what happened.  So it was, it was
successful in that respect.

DH: Why is this happening?

WC: Oh, oh, oh.  This goes back to what's called the 'Browser Wars' whereby
Microsoft put, effectively put Netscape, eh out of business by giving away a
competitor product for free using their, all their money to do that.  They did
much the same with Apple, although Apple hasn't gone out of business and em,
the people who are behind this virus I would suspect are people who, who, em,
are promoting what is called Open Sof... Open, eh, eh, .... Open System
Software whereby eh, you can em, eh, have competitors for the Microsoft
products which, are essentially free.  

DH: But would the attackers then eh, almost by definition be competitors?

WC: Em, no because, ... these competitors, they don't really exist as a
company, although there are some companies such as openoffice.org and eh em,
StarOffice and eh Lynux  but em, Microsoft has essentially put all the
_commercial_ competition either out of business or they've bought them up or
whatever.  Eh, em Open Source Software is developed by eh, volunteers and,
anybody can go into a website, have a look at how the program is developing and
throw in a suggestion and say you know, you should include my little ...

DH: yeah.

WC: ... my little suggestion.  

DH: The experts say they're going to move on Microsoft tomorrow.  Eh, is this
worm an expression of hatred of Microsoft?

WC: Absolutely, that's exactly what it is.  And, and also the reason this S-C-O
company was targetted was because eh, if you go to a website such as
openoffice.org you can ..., you can download a free copy of what is a
competitor for Microsoft Office.  So an equivalent of Microsoft Word, an
equivalent of Microsoft Excel which probably most of your listeners have on
their computers.

DH: William, is their any protection against this?

WC: Em, eh, yes.  Two things you can do.  Number one, em, if you have Windows
and you have Microsoft Office get the updated versions by connecting to the
internet and, and go into the Microsoft website and downloading it, but if you
have ... that won't protect you if you have the virus already and if you do the
thing to do is, first of all do no harm so unplug your computer from the
internet and plug it out of the network if you're connected to a network and
then use a different computer, maybe go to a, a, a, em, a web cafe to go to
sophos.com who, who, which is an anti-virus company and you can download onto a
floppy disk their, em, a free eh, eh, cleaning utility which will clean up your
computer.  

DH: Very good.  William Campbell, director of BUA Training, computer expert,
thank you for that.  It's ten minutes to eight....