When the worm turns

Even as we hobble back to Internet connectivity, it8217;s difficult not to drop a curtsy to the evil genius who brought life on the World W...

Even as we hobble back to Internet connectivity, it8217;s difficult not to drop a curtsy to the evil genius who brought life on the World Wide Web to a standstill this weekend. On Saturday, servers around the world suddenly slowed towards virtual inactivity, as a mysterious virus generated excessive network traffic. Immediately called the SQL Slammer worm, it spread through network connections, instead of the more common e-mail route. And instead of wiping out data, or zipping through address books and sending juvenile messages, it simply exploited a gaping vulnerability in a Microsoft database programme and bombarded systems with an inexhaustible flurry of requests for information. The result: an Internet traffic jam. The manifestations: airline booking systems ground to a halt. Automatic teller machines blinked off. Disruptions in online trading led to sharp losses in countries like South Korea, one of the most wired countries. E-mail services acted up, with users unable to access their messages or send new ones.

While businesses and insurance companies count their losses, everyday Netizens too have reason to pause. We8217;ve been down this road before. This is not the first time surfers have been left stranded, though it8217;s been 18 long months since the last major virus struck. What8217;s intriguing this time is the route to torture. In a world spinning ever faster, can there be anything more infuriating than to stare endlessly at frozen computer screens? A quarter of a century ago, Gordon Moore, co-founder of Intel, refined his famous law: that computing power would grow exponentially, that it would double every 18 months. And, amazingly, it has. So, in tandem, has mankind8217;s almost insatiable desire for speed. As James Gleick documented so chillingly in his book Faster, the malaise of our age is hurry sickness, a manic obsession with snipping milliseconds off routine tasks.

The mastermind behind SQL Hammer 8212; said by cyber-detectives to be based in Hong Kong 8212; appears to agree. He 8212; or she 8212; must have chortled in sinister merriment this weekend at the prospect of millions of Internet users from Japan to Jamaica, from India to Indianapolis staring blankly at their computer screens, tapping their fingers on their keyboards in unbearable irritation. Now, if only Microsoft would just hurry up and plug that glitch in their software.