Subject: 911 DoS attack
Monday April 3 6:58 PM ET
FBI Investigating Computer Virus That Calls 911
HOUSTON (Reuters) - A computer virus that could disrupt 911 emergency services is
being investigated after it
was detected in the Houston area, the FBI said in a statement on Monday.
Search warrants were issued in the case last week but no arrests have been made, said
a spokesman for the
agency, which has made computer security a top priority since leading Web sites came
under cyber-attack in
February.
In a statement, the agency said the self-propagating Texas virus erases hard drives,
then causes infected
computers to dial 911 emergency telephone numbers and leave the line open.
``A call of this nature could potentially cause local emergency personnel to respond
to false 911 calls,'' the
agency said. It said local 911 services in Houston had not detected a ''significant
increase'' in the number of such
calls.
The National Infrastructure Protection Center in Washington, D.C.,
said in a separate
statement the virus is not widespread.
``To this point, information and known victims suggest a
relatively limited
dissemination of this script in the Houston, Texas area,'' said
the statement, which
was posted on the Internet.
The NPIC, which is a joint government-private sector agency created in 1998 to assess
threats to computer
networks and other infrastructures, said the virus was spread by source computers
that ``scanned several
thousand computers through four Internet service providers (including) America On
Line, AT&T, MCI and
Netzero.''
The virus spreads by attacking computers with Windows operating systems set up to
allow users to share files
over the Internet, it said.
