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The Bulgarian Threat

In March 1990, the first attempt was made to quantify the extent of the threat posed by computer viruses. Dr Peter Tippett, a Case Western University scholar and the president of Certus International, a software company, predicted that 8 per cent of all PCs would be infected within two years, even if no new viruses were written. He estimated the cost to remove the infections at $1.5 billion over five years – without taking into account the value of data destroyed in virus attacks. Later, in 1991, he estimated that organizations in North America with over 400 computers had a 26 per cent probability of being hit by a virus within the next year; they also had a 5 per cent chance of that virus causing a ‘disaster’, which he defined as twenty-five or more machines becoming infected. A more recent projection, made late 1991, went further. It suggested that as many as 12 million of the world's 70 million computers – or roughly 17 per cent – would be infected within the next two years.

Predictions such as those made in Dr Tippett’s report have proved difficult to substantiate; most virus attacks simply aren’t reported; there is no body that regularly collects reliable statistics about the virus problem; and estimates of costs are always just guesses (in Tippett’s case, it’s now thought his guess was on the low side). When Tippett made his predictions the number of new viruses that were appearing made it seem possible that their sheer volume would overwhelm the world’s computer systems. As this book is being written, there are over 1,000 catalogued viruses and variants in the West; by the time the book appears there could well be twice that number.

Tippett had based his predictions on the behaviour of just one virus, called Jerusalem. It was first discovered in December 1987 at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, though it is thought to have

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