Grossman: 'Love Bug' Most Devastating Virus Ever
LEON HARRIS, CNN ANCHOR: We go back to Lev Grossman who's in our New York bureau this morning. We're talking about this love -- "I love you" virus that has been ravaging computers around world. I think we've got the microphone problems straightened out. Lev, can you hear me now?</s>LEV GROSSMAN, "TIME DIGITAL": I certainly can.</s>HARRIS: Now I can hear you. All right. Let's begin again. Now, I have heard this morning, I heard it said that this is the worst virus ever, is that true?</s>GROSSMAN: It appears to be the consensus among security experts, that by some measures this is in fact the most devastating virus outbreak that we've ever seen. We should keep in mind that it has spread more quickly than any other virus, including the Melissa virus that we remember from about a year ago. In other respects, it is not as damaging as some other viruses, it's not as malicious, for example, about erasing files on your hard drive as some viruses we've seen.</s>HARRIS: Yes. But isn't it true, though, I heard some other people talking this morning about it being possible for this virus to go into your files and take out proprietary information, say for instance, your bank card numbers, or whatever, and then send that number to some other mailbox?</s>GROSSMAN: That's very true, the virus does make an attempt to roundup some of your passwords and send them off to an e-mail address that we believe is in the Philippines. However, it is a little bit ironic, the virus was so successful that the site that it was -- it's downloading a little Trojan Horse program, and it's downloading it from a Web site, that Web site immediately went down because the virus was so successful it was getting so many demands for the download.</s>HARRIS: You say this has been traced back to some mailbox in the Philippines. Does that mean that authorities or technology experts can actually trace back this program to who actually started the whole thing?</s>GROSSMAN: Well, they're doing their best to do that. The FBI is, as I understand it, working with authorities in the Philippines to try to figure out exactly who planted this virus. I don't think they've got a culprit yet, but that is the goal.</s>HARRIS: All right, so in the meantime what do we do?</s>GROSSMAN: Well, the two things you can do are update your antivirus software, assuming that you have some on your computer, make sure you have the latest, latest version, and that means, incidentally, the latest version this morning because there are some new versions of this virus floating around that cropped up overnight. The other thing you can do is just make sure you stay aware and educate yourself and people around you so they know how to spot the virus when it shows up.</s>HARRIS: All right, Lev Grossman, thanks for bearing with us this morning, and thanks for the advice.</s>GROSSMAN: Thanks for having me.</s>HARRIS: All right, take care.