Damage From Computer Virus Set at $97 Million

A virus that infected scores of computers across the United States earlier this month caused at least $97 million worth of damage, the director of the Computer Virus Industry Assn. said Thursday.

“Our calculations of the damage it caused are very conservative. The real cost is probably well over $100 million,” said John McAfee, computer virus consultant and director of a Santa Clara-based group of 11 companies that markets computer programs to fight viral programs.

He said the virus forced more than 6,000 systems on the Internet network to crash, causing 1.132 million hours of unnecessary work.

According to McAfee, there were two main types of damage.

The first was loss of the computers and disruption of thousands of people’s work schedules.

7.3% Infected

“We had the equivalent of an enormous manufacturing plant standing idle incurring all its overheads and wage costs, but unable to produce anything because it had to be evacuated as a result of a bomb threat,” he said.

The second main category of damage was the direct additional costs of manpower and computing time involving in shutting down systems, searching for the virus, cleaning it out and getting the systems operating again.

“The analogy there is the cost of conducting a massive search for thousands of hidden bombs and then disabling them,” McAfee said.

Of the 85,000 systems affected by the Internet virus, only 7.3% were actually infected and 90% of the networks had to close for an average of 16 hours, he said. Half the networks were down 36 hours or more, and the military network Milnet was disrupted for more than 40 hours.

McAfee said his study showed 2.076 million machine hours where computers were rendered inoperative, with a direct cost for lost productivity of $29.4 million and downtime for the computers estimated at $41.5 million.

The virus also infected the Unix system, the software running the networks and one widely used by research groups hooked up to it.