Until lately, the only bugs the grain industry had to worry about were the ones out in the fields.
But now there are insidious little creatures that have the potential to gnaw away on grain industry profits from the confines of office towers.
The latest computer virus to attack computer systems worldwide has been dubbed the love bug. The electronic letter titled “ILOVEYOU” comes with an attached file that can wreak havoc if opened with a Microsoft Outlook e-mail program.
Late last week the electronic toxin wiped out e-mail servers at major corporations, managing to penetrate systems at the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency and British parliament.
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Inconvenient problem
The bug hit a number of Canadian agribusinesses, but damage has primarily been limited to the inconvenience of losing e-mail for a couple of days and the cost of cleaning up the bug droppings.
Agricore appears to have been hit the hardest. About 1,600 computer users lost their e-mail access when the love bug attacked the company’s system May 4. A number of employees opened the attachment in the morning and within a matter of minutes the computer department was forced to shut down its e-mail servers in Alberta and Saskatchewan.
“We did shut it down before our computer system was totally overwhelmed, but we could see that would happen,” said communications manager Diane Wreford.
Oddly enough the bug didn’t affect Agricore’s Manitoba e-mail server because it had already crashed the previous day due to an unrelated problem.
Once an employee opens the love-letter-for-you.txt attachment, the bug propagates by sending itself to all of the people on that person’s e-mail address book. Over 300 employees at Agricore opened the attachment before the company got the word out.
Aside from inundating e-mail servers, the love bug overwrites graphics and music files located on computer hard drives where the love letter attachment was opened.
According to the Symantec Antivirus Research Centre, there are now 13 variants of the original bug. Updated versions have different subject lines and messages and their attachments could prove nastier because they attack word processing and spreadsheet documents.
Aside from time, effort and clean-up costs, damage at Agricore was limited. The virus did not affect the company’s day-to-day business operations.
The love bug made an appearance at a number of other agribusinesses and government institutions, but damage was insignificant.
One employee at the Winnipeg Commodity Exchange received the e-mail but immediately deleted it.
“We’re very happy to say we had absolutely no problems at all,” said Daye Irving, manager of communications for the exchange.
The railways and the Canadian Wheat Board escaped the wrath of the virus as well.
“The bug has no bite here. It did nothing to us,” said board spokesperson Justin Kohlman.
The bug attacked Agriculture Canada, but damage was minimal. About 50 computer users opened the attachment, but since the agency does not use the targeted e-mail client, the message wasn’t rebroadcast. Those 50 users lost a few thousand picture and sound files, but they were recovered from back-up files.
“We’re not using Microsoft Outlook, we’re using Novell GroupWise, so it did not propagate the way it did elsewhere,” said Informatics Security manager Norman Snow.
Paterson Grain was infected by the bug but damage was isolated to the software on five computers that opened the file.
“We stopped it as fast as we found it,” said computer manager Sam Brooks.
As of May 8 Paterson’s e-mail server was still down.
“We’re putting a filter in front of it,” said Brooks, who said he’s in no hurry to get the system back up until antivirus protection is in place.
Saskatchewan Wheat Pool declined to comment on how the virus affected its operations.
More protection
Wreford said Agricore’s external e-mail system is still down. It is being equipped with more virus protection and the company is also furnishing its employees with advice about attachments.
“I know we might miss the newest animated greeting card or joke. But we simply can’t afford to have this type of damage done to our systems,” said chief information officer Rand Ayres in a memo sent to employees the day after the attack.
He closed his memo with this comment: “By the way – and let’s be truthful – how many of us have really gotten love letters lately, eh? Now, an offer for a new Ford F-250 pick-up truck, I might consider opening … but a love letter? Yuk!”
