August 27, 1999 Web posted at: 2:12 p.m. EDT (1812 GMT) by Douglas F. Gray and Jack McCarthy

From...

(IDG) -- U.K.-based Web hosting and development company Fortune Cookie Digital Media was subject to an attack by a "Trojan horse" virus Wednesday, which affected a number of Web sites hosted by the company.

Approximately 10 percent of the sites hosted by the company were infected with the virus, according to Justin Cooke, founder and managing director of Fortune Cookie. Earlier media reports quoted Cooke as stating the number as 30 percent, a figure which he states was "probably an overestimation because [the situation] was still going on."

The Trojan horse virus, called BackDoor-G, provided access to passwords that uploaded a second virus to the Web server, which then infected certain default documents, including default.htm and index.html, according to a statement issued by the U.K. company.

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Cooke admitted that some of the Web sites affected by the virus belonged to small to medium-sized companies.

Promotional Campaigns Group, a marketing firm, suffered from the virus, he said. The company could not be reached for comment today.

All affected Web sites were returned to normal operation within 20 minutes, Cooke said.

Fortune Cookie reported the incident to police authorities and is conducting its own investigation. "I don't understand why people would do such a thing," Cooke said.

Viruses involving Internet sites are happening with increasing frequency, one expert said. "Web sites are popping up all over the place and a whole new generation of hackers have grown up with the Internet," said Darren Kessner, a senior virus researcher at Symantec's antivirus research center in Santa Monica, Calif.

"Before, hackers would target people's home computers," Kessner said. "Now, as information spreads over the Internet through documents and e-mail, viruses can proliferate."

Douglas F. Gray writes for the IDG News Service in London. Jack McCarthy is a correspondent for the IDG News Service in San Francisco.