Few Casualties From Dreaded Computer Virus

The much-feared Michelangelo computer virus proved to be more of a common cold than the Black Death for personal computers Friday, striking only thousands of an estimated 80 million potential victims.

Having evaded the quality control checks of high-tech companies, it infected far more PCs than finally fell ill on the Renaissance master’s birthday, wending its way into the offices of major corporations and U.S. government agencies.

In the United States, Europe and Asia, public warnings about the virus appear to have preempted a bigger attack by encouraging PC operators to take precautions. Companies spent weeks debugging the menace.

“It’s not a deluge of any kind, it’s sort of an allergy,” said George Heidekat, communications manager at the Software Engineering Institute at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. “It seems the warnings have helped.”

The university’s Computer Emergency Response Team, which issued a warning last month, has received a handful of virus reports from scientists who are linked by Internet, the government and academic research computer network.

American Telephone & Telegraph Co., the computer and telecommunications giant, was the biggest company to admit getting hit by the virus. But a spokesman said the casualties amounted to only two of the company’s estimated quarter-million PCs.

U.S. government officials said they were unaware of any damage to government or military computers by the virus.

But Michelangelo surfaced earlier this week in the U.S. Agriculture Department’s Office of Public Affairs and was quickly thwarted by an anti-virus program.

The virus was to wipe out the contents of hard disks of infected computers as they were switched on March 6, the 517th anniversary of Michelangelo’s birth.

Any computer compatible with the International Business Machines Corp. standard is a potential target. But the virus can be eradicated by scanning devices and special software.

South Africa was the country hardest hit so far, with more than 1,000 computers affected in 450-500 companies.