WAZZU! GESUNDHEIT!
On January 14, a military source forwarded a hysterical warning issued by the Joint Chiefs of Staff computer office in coordination with the Defense Information Systems Agency. Sent to ALL U.S. military offices around the world, the JCS alert claimed the Wazzu macro virus -- in particular, a variant of it named Meatgrinder -- could "destroy hard drives, or at a minimum, data on hard drives . . . Be advised, many virus detection packages do not detect or eradicate [Wazzu]."
The warning was remarkable only for its paranoia and misconceptions -- the Wazzu virus can't destroy hardware and Meatgrinder was detectable, just about the opposite of JCS/DISA claims. The alert was also immediately posted anonymously to several Usenet news groups. [This raises another interesting question. If the Department of Defense is genuinely knowledgeable about alleged threats posed by foreign agents and hackers trying to make off with its secrets, how does it categorize simultaneous posting of internal computer security memos to Usenet news groups by its own warriors?]
In any case, the Wazzu alert was immediately dismissed as idiotic nonsense issued by anonymous nincompoops within the bureaucracy way too quick on the trigger but very successful at embarrassing themselves and others who certainly knew better.
Nevertheless, Wazzu virus variants do exist.
Crypt Newsletter did a cursory search of the Web for military publications and sites that have wrestled with them and came up with one interesting example from remote McMurdo Station, Antarctica.
Writing in the November 24 issue of the Antarctica Sun Times, a publication edited by an arm of the U.S. Naval Support Force at McMurdo, Jacqueline Kiel documents Wazzu infection at the base.
A Wazzu infection ran wild, according to Jim Johnson, assistant manager in the base's information systems department, when the virus arrived in an infected telephone list document generated by Word.
"Anybody who received that document and called it up [in Word] was infected," Johnson said.
Johnson alluded to Wazzu's payload, the contamination of other documents with instances of the nonsense word "wazzu." "I lost two man-weeks so far this season just dealing with virus corruption," he said.
Other virus infections which have plagued McMurdo have been caused by the system-area viruses Ripper, Monkey, and variants of Form.