They wouldn’t by any chance be talking their book, would they? The Computer Virus Industry Association, made up of companies that sell vaccine software, believes that the November 3 virus that paralized Unix machines on Arpanet cost about $96m, calculated on the basis that it took an average of 12 programmers at each site 36 hours apiece (at $22 an hour) to check every computer that may have been affected; 6,200 computers were hit and if each was out for about 16 hours (at $372 per hour) that makes $95.827m.
THE NOVEMBER 3 VIRUS COST ABOUT $96M
