If it's on CNN, it must be big news

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So I'm mentally preparing for my return to work yesterday when my husband calls and tells me to turn on CNN -- there's breaking news. Expecting pictures of destruction -- another plane crash, rioting in Gaza, a local brushfire -- I instead find Wolf Blitzer going mano a mano with some other CNN wonk about the huge computer worm wreaking havoc on the world. If you don't know by now, a group of B-grade worms got the best of some companies this week by taking advantage of laggard patching and, in a more sinister development, the legions of botnets nestled within millions of machines.

For anyone familiar with information security, the exchange on CNN bordered on comedic. These worms hit on Sunday; not Tuesday. But until CNN was infected, it wasn't "breaking news." Media groups were hit hard, which makes sense given their generous e-mail policies and legacy systems (This wave hit only Windows 2000 machines...as in the operating system released six years ago by Microsoft. That's ancient, folks.) But because of the news media's myopic view of computer and Internet security, this outbreak got a lot of attention. I'm not saying it didn't deserve some play, but these systems get hit all the time. This one just happened to strike during a slow news day. The local press chimed in, of course. And we had an epidemic.

I'm grateful for the timing. Last Friday our news writer, Bill Brenner, wrote a piece reminding people that August is prime time for viruses and worms to take seed in corporations and home offices. Had more people read it, they may have installed all their security fixes from Microsoft that day and avoided this week's mess. I guess they all watched CNN instead.

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