Hackers Loose Virus on AOL, Gain Access to Member Accounts

America Online Inc. said Friday that vandals had broken into its AOL service and gained access to an undisclosed number of member accounts, highlighting the vulnerability of even the world’s largest Internet services provider to hacker attacks.

The software virus attack appeared to be similar in kind, but by no means in scale, to the “ILoveYou” virus that paralyzed tens of millions of computers last month, penetrating networks in government and companies worldwide.

“We are aware of claims that a small number of member accounts were illegally accessed,” America Online spokesman Rich D’Amato said. We take these claims seriously,” he said.

The perpetrators of the attack targeted AOL customer service representatives with e-mails containing a “Trojan horse” attachment, that, when opened, created a connection to the sender’s computer and allowed access to some AOL accounts.

D’Amato declined to say how many accounts were compromised or when the attacks occurred.

He emphasized that the hackers did not appear to have gained access to AOL’s 23-million-member database of subscribers, or data on users of other services affiliated with AOL such as CompuServe and Netscape Netcenter.