Over the past two weeks, a new type of computer virus known as Blaster and its variants have attacked hundreds of thousands of computers worldwide, including in Japan. These viruses are different from those previously discovered. They expand rapidly across the Internet without any human intervention, such as opening an e-mail attachment. So a computer is vulnerable to attack just because it is on the Internet.
In Japan, nearly half of the population -- at least 56 million people -- use the Internet. Since many of them are novices who do not understand arcane computer terminology, it is essential that both private companies and public authorities tell these inexperienced users in plain language about how they can protect themselves against computer bugs that appear to be getting ever more potent.
Blaster, also known as Lovesan or MSBlast, takes advantage of a flaw in Microsoft's Windows operating systems, looking for other Internet-linked computers to infect in a cascading fashion. Once infected, a computer in operation develops troubles of itself, such as suddenly terminating all functions. Also, the virus is so programmed that it can attack Microsoft's Internet servers by sending a massive volume of data.