F-Secure Y2K Watch Real-Time Status Updates

As there are no news to report on Y2K Virus front, we've collected information on other types of Y2K problems located so far. This information comes from a variety of sources, including several newswires.

In Munchen, Germany, 495 parking tickets we're sent by the government with a due date of 11.1.00. The tickets were calculated with 100 years of interest.

In UK, a large set of credit card swipe machines failed to accept credit cards.

Some Microsoft web sites listed open positions for several jobs starting at "1.1.1900". Several other web sites had similar date problems, listing dates like 1900, 19100, 2099 or 20100.

In Helsinki, Finland, the local taxi central lost a database of all pre-ordered rides for January 2000. This loss happened some hours after midnight on January first. Spokesman said they can't recover the data and requested people to rebook their rides.

Hospitals in Sweden and Egypt reported non-lethal bug bites in medical equipment.

In Japan, a computer linked to radiation monitoring systems seized.

Some locations in USA, Spain and Finland reported problems with electronic door locks either keeping an area permanently open or closed.

Several satellites had problems. France said one of its defense satellite systems lost the ability to detect equipment failures. Likewise, some U.S. spy satellites (echelon?) reported temporary problems.

In Delaware, USA, several hundred slot machines shut down for a while at a Delaware horse track.

Some taxi meters broke down in a China province.

Egypt's national news wire service briefly stopped filing, but quickly fixed their problem.

In Tokyo, Japan, train ticket vending machines stopped briefly in 13 stations.

With no real Y2K virus incidents and relatively few real Y2K computer problems reported so far, F-Secure Y2K Watch team will keep posting updates to this page - whenever anything important happens.

Otherwise, happy new year from all of us at F-Secure to all of you and thanks for all the positive feedback on our status update service.

To read descriptions of the latest viruses we've analysed, have a look at
the list of new entries in our virus description database:

http://www.Europe.F-Secure.com/v-descs/_new.htm

The eastern parts of North and South America have now passed into year 2000 - with no news on Y2K viruses.

Nothing new is happening, we'll take a short break while we're waiting for new year to start in eastern USA. Stay tuned.

Computer Associates and Panda Software have put out some Y2K virus alerts recently. These include warnings for Trojan.Kill_Inst98, Win32.Crypto, Lucy2000, Esmeralda.807, Spaces.1633 and VBS.Tune.

These viruses exist, although anti-virus products might detect them with other names.

However, none of these viruses is particularily widespread and none of them are currently cause of concern.

F-Secure Anti-Virus either detects these viruses already or we're analysing them currently.

Finland, where the F-Secure HQ is located, is now safely living in the 21st century. Nothing further to report - we've received less than ten virus samples during the Y2K evening.

It's not only quiet on virus front but quiet on any kind of Y2K problems.


We're expecting more news as the day gets further in USA.

We've received more thorough reports from our correspondents in Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Hong Kong and Japan. All of them repeat the same story - no special virus problems or indeed Y2K problems at all.

We'd like to thank our correspondents: Antony Steele / Australia, Mr. Peng / Singapore, Allan Dyer / Hong Kong, Yosuke.Ito / Japan and John Hardcastle / New Zealand.

There have been no new developments on the Y2K virus front. Watch this space for more information during the next 18 hours.

Download our latest update to detect and disinfect AntiQFX, Kak and Tune worms.

We have just published the new updates for F-Secure Anti-Virus. These updates detect AntiQFX, Kak, Tune and some other viruses, worms and trojans. This is not a Y2k-related malware and it appeared during the last few days. So far we haven't received any new Y2k-related malware.

Nothing further to report on the Y2K virus front. We've received some new virus samples, as usual, but nothing alarming.

The new year 2000 has already started in the first nations of the world.
We're happy to announce that so far, no significant Y2K virus issues
have been found.

F-Secure's Y2K Team continues to monitor the Y2K virus situation over the
next few days and will post regular updates to this page.

WHAT HAS HAPPENED SO FAR?

Before Christmas 1999, about ten Y2K-related viruses were known, of which
two were known to be in the wild. After Christmas, two new interesting
viruses have been found: Win32.Crypto and VBS.Tune. Although these viruses
have been released just before Y2K and they do contain technologically
interesting features, neither of these viruses is known to be spreading in
the wild. They are not likely to cause large-scale damage over new year.
F-Secure Anti-Virus detects and stops these new viruses.

PROGNOSIS

Our view continues to be that Y2K viruses will not pose significant problems.

WHAT ABOUT OTHER Y2K PROBLEMS?

Although F-Secure does not monitor other than virus-related Y2K
incidents, we can note that only two widely reported problems caused by the
Y2K bug have been found during the past two days (parking ticket problems
in Munich, Germany and credit card reader problems in UK).

WHAT NEXT?

Stay tuned, we'll keep you up-to-date.