Path: utzoo!utgpu!utstat!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!rutgers!elbereth.rutgers.edu!ron.rutgers.edu!ron From: ron@ron.rutgers.edu (Ron Natalie) Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip Subject: Re: Damage Estimates of the Worm Attack Keywords: worm attack, damage Message-ID: Date: 21 Mar 89 18:36:53 GMT References: <1898@uwovax.uwo.ca> Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J. Lines: 22 Rutgers has a rather large internet network between it's campuses. It took us about a man-day (two of us spent Thursday morning) fixing up the various machines on campus to twart the bug. The next day we spent about 5 man-days answering calls from the media. Note, that the virus wasn't what caused us to spend the first man-day. It was the security hole in the UNIX software that left the virus in. We would have had to fix it anyway even if the bug was reported to us in a more innocuous way than having a virus unleashed on us. The media hype was directly related to the scare though. Thus you would probably be correct in attributing $1920 (in very generous salary and overhead money) to answering media inquiries directly associated to the virus. We've spent a lot of time checking over our security in the intervening time, as have a lot of people, but the amount of money they spend beefing up their security should not be attributed to the virus. It was a latent problem that they should have been doing anyhow. -Ron