By Andrew Green, Staff Reporter
THE NEW computer virus wreaking havoc in United States businesses has been transmitted to Jamaica, technology sector sources say.
Known as BugBear.B, the virus tries to steal corporate passwords in order to access financial data from the computers of about 1,200 of the world's leading banks, wire services have reported.
Wednesday Business has been informed that information technology managers at several local companies have been scrambling to get adequate protection as the virus began to pose a threat locally during the past week.
"Once it steals all your passwords, if you are connected to a financial institution, it can clean out all your accounts," said Suzann Dodd, local information technology writer and an attorney-at-law.
"If you don't have passwords like that and all you have are passwords to a couple of porn sites, then it is not going to be very effective. It would only get the passwords to the porn sites," she added.
Discovered last week, Bugbear.B is a variation of the BugBear virus that appeared last October and spreads by sending copies of itself as attachments in e-mail messages. Overseas press reports said it infected computers running any Windows operating system and had spread to more than 106 countries on Thursday.
COMPANIES UNDER ATTACK
Several local companies have been hit by the virus since the weekend, an information technology manager told Wednesday Business, on condition of anonymity. He said a number of computers had been infected, and in the worst case, a company had lost all the data on a machine.
The virus can do this damage as, apart from gathering passwords and credit card numbers by following key strokes, the virus can also disable various personal firewall and anti-virus software applications, the manager stated.
"To date, we have not seen any incidents on our side, but we have been aware of the problem since last week," said Philip Freckleton, Snr., an information technology expert with FirstCaribbean Jamaica Bank. He said, "Our policy is that every single machine in our environment works with virus protection."
BANK TARGETS
Mr. Freckleton said some international banks were not as thorough and First-Caribbean had taken measures to protect itself from being infected.
The virus had Web addresses for financial institutions including J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., American Express Co. and Bank of America Corp., AP wire service reported. It said no institution has been significantly affected so far because of tight security.
"I don't see it affecting Cybervale in any direct manner," said Dominic Henry, technical support representative for Cybervale, a St. Catherine-based Internet service provider. BugBear.B does not affect Linux or MacIntosh systems, and, he said, "our back-end comprises Linux machines, so from a security standpoint Cybervale is protected."
Software engineer, Garth Soares, said, "The simple and safe thing is to have either of the major virus protection software, either McAfee or Norton. Once you have a current version, it alerts you, and it updates the software automatically."
