Inside peek at the Message Lab's
anti-virus control room
In a corner of a two-storey office
block in a modern business park
just off the motorway near
Gloucester in western England,
there is a room. Sealed off by
thick, floor-to-ceiling panes of
glass and a stout wooden door, it
looks like a scaled-down version
of the high-tech bunkers typecast
by Hollywood as the place from
where nuclear wars are fought.
One wall is taken up by a series
of large electronic screens, each
constantly bubbling an array of
data and charts feeding back
up-to-the-millisecond, full-colour
information from command stations
across three continents. In front
of the screens are three banks of
computers, tended by staff who
simultaneously pore over their own
desktop consoles and keep a wary
eye on the electronic wall, all
with the sober intensity of those
who believe that even a moment's
inattention could have nasty
consequences...
Inside the control room of a war on viruses
Welcome to the control room of MessageLabs, a key British watchtower in the escalating global battle against computer viruses. On these screens, technicians recently monitored the unprecedented global outbreak of a new email-borne virus known as SirCam. In the past, even the most virulent mass mailer worms had a life expectancy of barely 48 hours, each of them contained after the initial explosion. SirCam wreaked havoc for two weeks.
Alex Shipp, MessageLabs' senior anti-virus technologist, said: "We've never seen anything like this. Normally you would have expected it to fizzle out but it got worse than ever."
Email-borne viruses account for well over 90per cent of the most active strains in cyberspace. MessageLabs scans more than 3million emails on behalf of its clients every day as they cross the Internet to weed out any viruses hidden within them. MessageLabs was the first centre to detect the Love Bug worm.
The company has built a unique network of powerful computers - dubbed control towers - at eight locations in Britain, mainland Europe, the United States and Hong Kong, each loaded with four separate virus detection packages.
As well as recognising the signatures of known viruses, these are programmed to recognise virus-like code and behaviour in emails and attachments so that previously unseen viruses can also be detected.
The company sees on average of two new strains a week, most of which come to nothing. On this day, a virus, apparently originating in Germany, was intercepted.
SNP.
