LONDON/SEOUL (Reuters) - A resilient 2-day-old computer worm continued to hobble the Internet Monday, infesting computer networks in Europe, Asia and America and stoking fears it will slow data transmissions for a few more days.
Despite efforts over the weekend by companies around the world to patch their networks and stop the "SQL Slammer" worm in its tracks, the infestation continued in many regions, though below peak levels seen during Saturday's outbreak.
"It would be very optimistic to think we could eradicate this 100 percent from the Internet," said Graham Cluley, senior technical consultant at Britain's Sophos Anti-Virus. "In isolated pockets, this will continue for days."
Internet slow-downs were more scattered Monday, but firms continued to report problems as they scrambled to install fortifications against future intrusions.
South Korea, the world's most wired country, was hit hardest by the worm. Monday it impacted stock trading as investors shied away from placing orders over the Internet, sending volumes to a 13-month low.
In Europe, security firms reported relatively fewer incidents of infected networks than in Asia and the United States. European markets were largely unaffected.
Raimund Genes, European president of Trend Micro, said it had logged 1,238 calls from U.S. companies victimized by Slammer compared to 40 in Asia and just seven in Europe. Some Web servers in India and China were also badly affected.
The worm, which is viewed as the most damaging Net attack in the past 18 months, spreads through network connections rather than via e-mail, the medium for previous high-profile virus attacks.
The malicious code exploits a weakness in Microsoft Corp's Windows 2000 SQL server database software, although it does not delete or otherwise touch data. It has crashed servers and congested traffic on the global network.
Microsoft has developed a patch that can be downloaded at:
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/tre...n/MS02-039.asp
By 11 a.m. GMT, sites that monitor Internet traffic flows were reporting data loss of nearly 20 percent -- a bit below Saturday's levels but about double the normal rate -- suggesting that fears the worm would re-emerge when companies re-started their servers Monday morning were justified.
Genes marveled at the design of Slammer, noting that its tiny size of 376 bytes -- about as dense as the subject line of an e-mail message -- enabled it to spread quickly. As is often the case, the worm's author left no indication of where he is from nor of a motive, Genes said.
Authorities in South Korea and the FBI in America announced they would investigate.
"It is a serious problem that people's lives were disrupted," South Korean President Kim Dae-jung said in a statement, adding that he had instructed ministries to act to prevent further virus attacks.
The virus hit South Korea particularly hard because it has the world's highest penetration of broadband Internet services, which are up to 100 times faster than dial-up modem services.
The government gave no estimates for losses from the computer attack, but the association representing Korean insurers said it would have to pay out some one billion won ($860,000).
The fallout was felt in some Asian stock markets, but because the virus had struck on a weekend the impact was limited.
Financial markets in Korea saw steep falls in shares of Internet service providers and gains for Web security firms.
"Some brokerage firms reported troubles in online bids in early trade," a spokesman for the Korea Stock Exchange said. The market's benchmark KOSPI index finished down 2.7 percent to its lowest close in more than three months.
Online stock trading accounts for more than two thirds of market turnover in South Korea, where people regularly click a mouse to pay taxes, order pizza, buy clothes and even consult a doctor.
Other parts of Asia also suffered disruption. In China, nationwide telecoms operator China Telecom shut down connections to overseas Internet networks over the weekend, and some access remained limited Monday.
India also struggled to get its network back up to speed.
"Internet speed is coming back after a massive slowdown which amounted to total closure during the weekend," said B.K. Gairola, deputy director-general of India's National Informatics Center, which maintains hundreds of government Web sites.
Bernhard Warner and Nam In-soo
