Virus sparks serious disruption across Florida

By DAVE GUSSOW and HELEN HUNTLEY

© St. Petersburg Times, published May 5, 2000

Gov. Jeb Bush concedes he's an e-mail junkie. But he resisted the urge Thursday to read a message on his computer labeled "ILOVEYOU."

"Not many people write me to say, "I love you,' " said Bush.

The governor didn't fall for the most virulent e-mail virus yet to sweep the world, but others in his office and around Florida did. And they found that love hurts.

The virus caused serious disruption at some Florida businesses, while others escaped with only minor nuisances or no problems at all. Some companies shut down their e-mail system for a few hours or the entire day, either to purge the virus or to prevent it from spreading.

This act of global electronic sabotage caught the world off-guard, unlike the Melissa virus, which was largely stopped in its tracks last year.

"With Melissa, we had a 24-hour warning and we prevented it, but this one came out of the blue," said Timothy Eitel, senior vice president and chief information officer at Raymond James Financial Inc. in St. Petersburg. "We got it shut down before it proliferated throughout our network. Our virus protection software company got us a fix to it and we put that in about 11:30 a.m."

He said it was taking longer to restore e-mail to the company's 1,500 branches.

"Our networking staff will be on it all day and probably throughout the evening," he said. "We feel very fortunate it didn't do more damage."

One of the hardest-hit companies was Best Software, which has an office in St. Petersburg.

"This has literally been paralyzing for us," said Best spokesman Brian Muys from the company's Reston, Va., office. The company had to take down its network so it could disinfect its servers, losing e-mail and Internet access for the entire day.

While the governor didn't open his e-mail, someone in his office did, forcing a shutdown of the office's e-mail system. The virus also shut down e-mail systems in the state House and Senate during the Legislature's hectic closing week, as well as e-mail at several state agencies and some local governments across Florida.

In Pinellas County, Public Defender Bob Dillinger said the county's e-mail system was shut down once the virus was detected, but the virus had destroyed some files. He said he will not know about damage in his office until today. "The entire e-mail system was shut down as a precaution," he said.

Some staffers at the Florida Chamber of Commerce, the state's largest business organization with 43,000 members, opened the e-mail, triggering its replication to all businesses on the Chamber's electronic mailing list. "So virtually every business in the state of Florida has it," said Steve Liner, the chamber's vice president of communications.

Office Depot had its e-mail system shut down at its headquarters in Delray Beach in Palm Beach County. And railroad giant CSX Transportation Inc. in Jacksonville also had problems.

Tech Data Corp. of Clearwater shut down its e-mail server as a precaution, said spokeswoman Beth Hardy. Jabil Circuit in St. Petersburg was alerted to the problem between 4 a.m. and 6 a.m. and installed filters to block the "love" message.

Other companies, such as Bankers Insurance and the Home Shopping Network in St. Petersburg, also moved early in the morning. Bankers Insurance used anti-virus software obtained Thursday morning to search its e-mail system and eliminate the offending attachments.

"Fortunately e-mail is not our only means of communication," said Stephen Beaty, chief information officer.

Home Shopping had been alerted to the problem by its anti-virus vendor and shut down its e-mail system from 6 a.m. to 11 a.m., when a software fix was installed, according to Dave Swanson, vice president of information technology operations.

Florida Power, TECO Energy Inc. and GTE reported no problems from the virus, although Carolina Power & Light did. CP&L, which is in the process of buying Florida Power, had to turn off its e-mail for the day as it checked for damage from several employees opening the e-mail attachment, according to spokesman Keith Poston. "We're really trying to be cautious," he said. As a result, CP&L and Florida Progress delayed a planned e-mail to employees announcing some key positions in the new combined company.

The Tampa law firm Hill, Ward and Henderson said it got the virus in an e-mail from a client and had to periodically shut down its e-mail system during the day.

"We exchange documents regularly with clients," office manager Christopher McDonnell said. "So far we've not discovered any damage that's of any concern, but we're very cautious with our e-mail program right now."

Several banks said the virus had caused minimal impact.

"We were very fortunate in that we detected it early and were able to put mechanisms in place to prevent it from spreading," said SunTrust Banks spokeswoman Carolyn Gosselin. She said the virus caused problems for some employees, "but did not interrupt any lines of business or customers."

The St. Petersburg Times reported no problems and e-mail systems were operating normally, although some employees had received copies of the virus.

Without e-mail, employees at many companies had to communicate the old-fashioned way.

"All of a sudden," said Eitel of Raymond James, "people had to start using the telephone."

-- Information from the Associated Press was used in this report.

© St. Petersburg Times. All rights reserved.