Word: contagions
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While the publicity has focused on AIDS during the past few years, several other sexually transmitted diseases are quietly spreading their own net of contagion. Some old scourges, like syphilis, are making comebacks, and more recently recognized infections, such as genital herpes and chlamydia, are moving swiftly through the population. The extent of the epidemics is unknown, since only a fraction of the cases are reported to health officials. Experts think at least 25 STDs strike millions each year, primarily teenagers and young adults...
...outbreak sent computer scientists scrambling to halt its spread. Russell Brand, who works for California's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, was one of the first to spot the problem. A quick survey of the lab's 400 machines showed that several computers had already been infected and that the contagion was growing rapidly. By early Thursday, computer operators had shut the system down and begun cleaning out the files. Then, recalls one of Brand's colleagues, "30 seconds after we restarted the system, the infection was back...
...week's end the contagion was largely contained. Defense Department officials were quick to point out that no data had been lost, no files destroyed, and none of the Government's most sensitive computer operations -- systems that do everything from gather intelligence to launch missiles -- had been compromised. But the event raised disturbing questions. "It shouldn't be so easy," says Lawrence Rogers, head of Princeton's Office of Computing and Information Technology. Harold Highland, editor of Computers & Security magazine, sees a useful lesson. "This attack is a wake-up call to all operators and users of computer networks...
...Thus the infection can be spread from computer to computer by unsuspecting users who either swap disks or send programs to one another over telephone lines. In today's computer culture, in which everybody from video gamesters to businessmen trades computer disks like baseball cards, the potential for widespread contagion is enormous...
Late at night . . . a sudden beep, a burst of light and a taunting message on the screen: GOTCHA ! Forty years after the dawn of the computer era, machines across the U. S. are being infected by a new contagion -- small but deadly programs that disrupt operations, destroy data and raise disturbing questions about the vulnerability of information systems everywhere. See TECHNOLOGY...