NO 'LOVE BUG': NEW COMPUTER VIRUS HITS; PRECAUTIONS TAKEN LOCALLY

Few problems were reported locally from a so-called "love bug" computer virus that by some estimates infected tens of millions of PCs around the world Thursday.

The software virus seduced computer users with an e-mail note proclaiming "ILOVEYOU," crippling government and corporate computer networks and destroying personal files of music and pictures. The virus disabled e-mail systems on Capitol Hill and in British parliament. State Department officials found the virus in many of their servers early Thursday and "shut off our connection with the outside world," spokesman Richard Boucher said.

AT&T Corp. shut down an e-mail system serving 145,700 employees.

The virus not only spread by e-mail like last year's Melissa virus but through instant messaging systems that let people chat on the Internet. The new virus was designed to destroy several types of increasingly popular computer files, including those storing pictures, video and music.

Computer security experts, stunned by the rapid spread of the virus, urged computer users to delete any e-mail with a subject line reading "ILOVEYOU" and a message saying "kindly check the attached LOVELETTER coming from me."

At mid-morning, Southeast Missouri State University put a filter on its mail server to screen out the attachments that carry the virus. Spokeswoman Ann Hayes said the attachment was opened on two computers on campus, damaging both.

At Biokyowa, information systems manager Pat Dohogne said two colleagues alerted him about the virus via e-mail and he immediately began downloading the latest antivirus update. But after 15 minutes, the download timed out. "Everybody in the whole world was trying to download the update," Dohogne said.

He sent an urgent e-mail to every user in the company instructing them to delete the e-mail.

He himself received a copy through an accounting forum he belongs to.

"I'm pretty much expecting everybody to get it," Dohogne said. "But I think we're going to be OK with it."

If the virus were going to damage the company's system, it would have already done so, he said.

He does not consider the virus as serious as some because one of the groups it is designed to affect are music files.

"Those should not be on our computers anyway," he said.

But because the company's computers were affected by another virus a year ago, "people take this very seriously," he said.

Dana Corp. reported no damage to its computers.

Youn Gonzales, manager of the Clas Computers Internet service, considers the love bug a serious threat. "It is as easy to spread as Melissa and more destructive," he said.

The company took several phone calls Thursday from people who were concerned.

After receiving a virus alert, the company set up a filter on its main mail servers. "All of our dial-up customers are very safe," Gonzales said. "They didn't have to do a thing."

The virus was activated by opening the "LOVELETTER" attachment. That commandeered a computer's Internet browser to visit a Web page, download a program that searches for various types of passwords, and send them to an e-mail account that appears to be based in the Philippines. The Web site was later shut down by its service producer.

New variations of the virus were already circulating by Thursday evening, including one disguised as a joke with an e-mail attachment reading "Very Funny."

"If this is unleashed on your home computer, I hope you have backups. It is a destructive file. Once it has run, it has done its damage," said Shawn Hernan, vulnerability team manager at the CERT Coordination Center, the government-chartered computer security team at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.

The FBI quickly opened a criminal investigation, and agents were trying to verify reports that the outbreak may have begun in Asia, possibly the Philippines.

Computer security firms scurried to post software on their Web sites to scan for the bug and remove it from infected machines.

The virus targets computers running on Microsoft's Windows operating system, attacking the Outlook e-mail program and the Internet Explorer browser, both of which are also made by Microsoft. The bug does not affect Macintosh systems.

It spreads like most e-mail viruses, arriving as a seemingly friendly message, infiltrating a person's computer address book and sending copies of itself to contacts listed.

"I stepped away from my desk for 30 minutes and when I came back, there were 177 people who were in love with me," said Ted Canova, news director at WCCO-TV in Minneapolis, who deleted the files and suffered no damage. "That's in addition to the 200 I had when I signed on today."

In addition to overwhelming computer networks with the sheer crush of e-mail it generates, the new virus strikes out at some of the most popular new passions on the Internet, destroying digital photographs and music stored with the digital technology known as MP3.

In Britain, about 30 percent of company e-mail systems were brought down by the virus, according to Network Associates, a computer security firm. In Sweden, the tally was 80 percent.

"The way we look at the I Love You virus is it's almost like Melissa on steroids," said Srivats Sampath, president and chief executive of security firm McAfee.com, a division of Network Associates. "It's the fastest propagating virus we've seen."

The Associated Press contributed to this report.