No catastrophe, but death by a thousand mouse clicks

By Thomas E. Weber (from The Wall Street Journal, May 5, 2000) The Love Virus came and conquered. So how bad was it? For many of us, things were already getting back to normal by the time we left the office Thursday.

1.    OUR COMPUTERS were working fine, our important files were still there and the most obvious lingering effects were office jokes like " Did you get that e-mail I sent, ha ha? "

2.    Now the experts are carefully dissecting this latest electronic pathogen and vaccinating our computers to protect them from relapses- They're also assessing the severity of the attack — including the possibility that users' passwords were compromised — and the difficulty of pulling off such a feat. Is the Love Virus worse than the denial-of-service attacks that shut down Yahoo! and other big sites back in February? Did it surpass last year's Melissa virus?

3. It doesn't matter. Those incidents came and went too, and life went on. After each new attack on the Internet, the very backbone of the New Economy, it's only natural to wonder about the worst-case scenario. But the biggest threat is the cumulative effect of all these assaults, which are fast becoming almost routine. For those of us who rely on the Internet, it's like death by a thousand clicks.

4. By now the pattern is familiar. You arrive at work to find a warning notice posted on the door or handed to you by a security guard. Or maybe the office manager flags you down, cautioning you to avoid the dreaded virus.

5. Next the e-mail system goes down. Computer techs scurry through the office, performing arcane rituals on each PC. Finally someone gives the official all clear and everyone gets back to work.

" This is really just an annoyance, " says a spokeswoman at Barnes & Noble, which shut down the e-mail system serving its headquarters –and more than 900 book stores across the U.S. for two hours. That story was repeated over and over, at company after company Catastrophe, no Inconvenience, absolutely. Now the Love Virus has joined Melissa in the ranks of Famous Web Maladies. But have you heard of the Dengue virus? Or Prettypark? Or Kakworm? 6. What does that add up to in dollars? Even the experts don't know for sure. " So you shut down the e-mail server for a day. How do you put a cost on that? " says Mikko Hypponen, a renowned virus expert at F-Secure in Espoo, Finland.

7.    Here's what had to happen at a typical company to eradicate the virus. First, the system administrator needed to learn about the virus Since the Love Bug had already swept through Europe by the time offices opened in the U.S. Thursday, that wasn't a problem. Most of the big antivirus services used by corporations had already contacted their customers by phone or fax with an alert.

8.    Then, to prevent the spread of the virus, most.system administrators either severed their computers' ties with the Internet or set up filters to screen out all messages with the subject line " ILOVEYOU." (This, presumably, did not prevent most important business correspondence from getting through.) With those measures in place, they could move on to downloading antivirus software updates and installing them, first on the e-mail servers, then on other critical file servers, and finally on individual users' PCs.

9.    In other words, for all but the smallest companies it took at least one person the better part of a day to deal with the virus. Multiplied across all the companies linked to the Net, that's a lot of time indeed.

10. And it's only getting worse. Now the Love Virus has joined Melissa in the ranks of Famous Web Maladies But have you heard of the Dengue virus? Or Prettypark? Or Kakworm? All of them are floating around out there and are considered reasonably serious. It's the rare virus that wreaks sufficient havoc to penetrate the public consciousness.

11 Those most at risk are those who embrace the Internet to its fullest. Witness the impact Thursday in tiny Estonia, which has more Net connections per capita than any other Eastern European country. " About half the companies here took the afternoon off, " says Juri Kaljundi, director of international development at CV-Online, an online resume company in Tallinn that escaped infection.

12. Ultimately, dealing with these annoyances is simply part of the overhead of being linked to the Internet, kind of the way having a telephone in your house brings with it calls from telemarketers. We'll just have to get used to it.

Task 3.3b. The correct answers to these questions will help you identify the essential elements that make up a summary:

1.    CITATION:

What is the citation for " No catastrophe, but death by a thousand mouse clicks"?

NB!: A citation should include the title of the article, its author, its source.

2.    TOPIC:

What is the topic of " No catastrophe, but death by a thousand mouse clicks"?

NB!: The topic is the general subject matter or focus of the article. Summarise it in a short phrase.

3.    THESIS:

What is the thesis of " No catastrophe, but death by a thousand mouse clicks"? Write the thesis in your own words.

NBI: (a) The thesis consists of the author's major assertion about the topic, (b) In this article, the thesis is located in Paragraph #3. (c) After you have selected the thesis statement, re-state it in your own words.

4. SUPPORTING IDEAS:

Re-read Paragraphs #4-6. Summarise the troubles occurred after infecting by ILOVEYOU in no more than three sentences. Make an effort to use your own words.

5. SUPPORTING IDEAS:

Re-read Paragraphs #7-9 in which steps against the virus which should be taken by a system administrator are described. Using your own words, summarise these steps in a numbered list (e.g. (1).........; (2)........; (3).......; ). Use no more than 2 sentences for each step.

Task 3.3c. Write a three-paragraph summary of " No catastrophe, but death by a thousand mouse clicks".

Task 3.4. Read the information letter about the International conference and do the tasks below:

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