Virus grounds Heathrow jets

By Abul Taher, Metro

Last updated at 09:34 05 May 2004


An internet bug wreaking havoc across the world delayed Heathrow flights and crashed coastguard computers yesterday.

As damage caused by the Sasser worm reached an estimated £ 500million, it brought down 40 British Airways check-in desks at Heathrow Terminal 4, holding up 21 flights.

At the same time, it crippled the computer system used by all 19 UK coastguard stations, forcing staff to use paper charts instead of digital maps. Abroad, it struck 300,000 terminals in the German postal service, 1,200 computers at the European Commission in Brussels and several international banks and financial companies, including Goldman Sachs.

In the Far East, Hong Kong hospitals and government departments were hit, as well as Taiwan's postal service.

US airline Delta and Australian railways have also been affected.

Security experts fear the next wave of victims will be domestic broadband users. Joe Hartmann, of Trend Micro in California, said: 'Many corporate computer users have put patches in place, but that's not true for many home computer users, where this virus can spread exponentially. I don't think it has reached its full potential yet.'

Mikko Hypponen, of Finnish data security firm F-Secure, added: 'It will be a big problem for a day or two, then it will linger on the Internet for weeks, and probably years.'

Other experts fear hackers will try to exploit the damage caused by Sasser. Unlike e-mail viruses, which spread only when infected attachments are opened, the worm can infect a PC minutes after it is connected to the Net.

The bug crashes computers every few minutes but causes no lasting damage. Sasser, which targets machines using Windows 2000 or above, can be prevented by downloading a patch from the Microsoft website.

Both BA and the coastguard service insisted last night that nobody was put at risk by the temporary crashes.

Most watched News videos

Sorry we are not currently accepting comments on this article.