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- <text id=91TT2123>
- <title>
- Sep. 23, 1991: Let's Send a Couple Billion . . .
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1991
- Sep. 23, 1991 Lost Tribes, Lost Knowledge
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- GRAPEVINE, Page 13
- Hey! Let's Send A Couple Billion To Wolfgang
- </hdr><body>
- <p>By Janice Castro/Reported by Sidney Urquhart
- </p>
- <p> World Bank economists in Washington swallowed hard when
- the message suddenly flashed on their screens. Identifying
- itself as "Traveller 1991," an invading computer virus
- announced, "Do not panic. I am harmless." Horrified bank
- officials, who use computers to transfer billions from developed
- countries to hard-pressed parts of the world, wondered at first
- if it was possible for some tiny nation to fill its coffers by
- tapping into their inner sanctum. An international army of
- computer nerds and police experts soon tracked down the
- trespasser and pronounced it harmless. But what about the next
- one? Scotland Yard investigators, who traced the virus as far
- as eastern Germany, believe that disgruntled hackers there are
- still at work injecting disruptive electronic microbes into
- world financial networks.
- </p>
-
- </body></article>
- </text>
-
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