Hey! Let's Send a Couple Billion to Wolfgang

By Janice Castro

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.

With reporting by Sidney Urquhart