Story number 1 for 8 May 2000

Today’s leading news focuses on the latest computer virus, dubbed the ‘Love Bug’. Like Judas’ kiss, the virus unleashes its devastation while hiding behind new identities and worming its way into more and more systems. The virus’ potential impact could be destructive to missions work dependent on Internet communications. Wycliffe’s Chris Sheeran is the e-mail administrator for JAARS. “I don’t think it was really malicious, as far as deleting everything on your hard disk, but it’s something that could really mess the work up. At this point, we don’t have really beefed up virus protection in front, and so we’re looking at a budget item for this next year because I think it’s going to continue.” Sheeran masterminded the group’s response and adds that: “One of the guys here was able to put a block in on the viruses coming into our system and so the block scans the messages for certain things— started ‘parking’ them and not forwarding them to the other people in the system. This one was kind of insidious because it was coming from people that you knew.”