Virus update: Sasser grounds BA as hype takes hold

The Sasser worm continues to cause problems for computer users worldwide and has claimed more big names - such as British Airways and investment bank Goldman Sachs.

The virus hit a staggering 300,000 machines at Deutsche Post and a number of hospitals in New Orleans were shut down for several hours.

But closer to home the biggest victim so far has been British Airways, which lost the use of around half its check-in desk computers at Heathrow's Terminal Four.

The outage meant delays to 21 British Airways flights and disruption for thousands of travellers.

Elsewhere in Europe, Finnish bank Sampo Bank was reportedly forced to close 130 branches for several hours after the virus struck on Monday morning.

Such widespread, big name virus victims appear to be a throw-back to the dark days of Melissa and the Love Bug, but not everybody is convinced this is the 'end of the world' scenario some media would have users believe - as the Heathrow story hit the front pages of national newspapers.

Simon Perry, divisional vice president of security strategy at Computer Associates, said the impact of Sasser is being blown a little out of proportion.

"All the large UK companies we've spoken to during the last 24 hours tell me that they are actually doing a fantastic job of keeping themselves protected."

However, that's not to say the threat should not be taken seriously and Perry believes there is worse to come.

He said: "I do expect that we'll see a rapid and extensive cycle of variants being produced in the coming few weeks with increasingly dangerous payloads."

However Perry added those will be "more of an immediate threat for home users".

Stuart Okin, UK security chief at Microsoft, said home users have been particularly hard hit by Sasser because they lack the know-how of large firms in dealing with such attacks and may have installed Windows out of the box and never thought to update it.

He added that the large number of home users making do with dial-up internet connections also means many don't download updates because of the time taken to do so.

"The majority of calls into Microsoft about Sasser have predominantly been from home users," Okin told silicon.com.

The more serious long term threat to businesses - as with MyDoom and Bagle - will be if future iterations carry a payload which acts as "a recruitment exercise for another zombie force armed with DDOS intentions," said Perry.