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Re: Time line for love bug alerts

  • From: Sean Donelan
  • Date: Sun May 21 06:37:03 2000

Due to some timezone problems, and machines with bad clocks, things aren't
always what they seemed.  In particular Bugtraq's extremely early alert
appears to be a bad clock.  I believe this is the actual order of alerts.
I can't verify the Financial Services Information Sharing Alert, but this
is the time given in the congressional hearing.

Some folks sent me internal company alerts which were earlier, in some cases
much earlier.  A Swiss bank issued an intra-company alert very early.

I suppose I wasn't clear, my interest was only "public," or at least
semi-public alerts such as the FS/ISAC.  So I've left private alerts
out of the list, except for the intra-government ones discussed at
the Senate hearing.

One intersting thing came out during the Senate hearing.  Things really
haven't changed that much since the Internet Worm in 1988.  People turned
off their Internet connection which also kept them from getting the "cure."
On the other side, out-of-date contact information and lack of an out-of-band
method to alert people meant many didn't receive the alert because their
e-mail systems had already been filled by the bug.

4-May-2000 07:00 UTC Financial Services Information Sharing and Analysis
                     Center (FS/ISAC) Alert (unverified), it remains unclear
                     to me who FS/ISAC alerted, e.g. only its 22 member
                     companies or others
4-May-2000 08:57 UTC alt.comp.virus posting from the UK
4-May-2000 09:45 UTC FBI/NIPC Watch Center notified by a representative from
                     private industry
4-May-2000 10:17 UTC NANOG posting from BBC in UK
4-May-2000 10:40 UTC Department of Defense Joint Task Force for Computer Network
                     Defense (JTF-CND) first alerted by a unit
4-May-2000 11:18 UTC Telecommunications Information Sharing and Analysis Center
                     (T/ISAC) notified by a carrier, I have found no information
                     T/ISAC notified any of its members
4-May-2000 11:44 UTC JTF-CND begins to notify DOD components
4-May-2000 11:45 UTC NIPC notifies FedCIRC about virus
4-May-2000 11:45 UTC FedCIRC begins to notify federal agencies
4-May-2000 12:54 UTC AP news story (Hong Kong)
4-May-2000 13:17 UTC Reuters news story(London)
4-May-2000 13:30 UTC ZDNet news story
4-May-2000 13:31 UTC F-Secure press release
4-May-2000 14:30 UTC CERT/CC public alert
4-May-2000 14:38 UTC Symantec press release
4-May-2000 15:00 UTC FBI/NIPC first public alert
4-May-2000 15:05 UTC Computer Associates press release
4-May-2000 16:19 UTC Trend Micro press release
4-May-2000 16:56 UTC Bugtraq posting