It was all wormy over at CNN yesterday. Around 1:30pm EST, multiple Internet worms targeting recent vurnerabilities disclosed in Microsoft Operating Systems struck the CNN newsroom.

Wolf Blitzer was not quoted as saying "we get signal", as the remainder of his broadcast became dominated by the worm story. A stream of reports similar to "CNN Atlanta, NYC, and LA report being effected, as do ABC News, the New York Times, and corporations such as Caterpillar" were delivered by Blitzer in Breaking News tone from The Situation Room.

"He didn't look as nervous as that time when Jon Stewart was beating up the Crossfire team in the other studio," a random viewer pointed out, "he was in form."

Lou Dobbs, Arron Brown, and the rest of the CNN Staffers waged through the crisis in order to get important news about the Israeli Gaza pullout and a riot surrounding $50 used Apple laptops through to the people. Fox News appeared to be unaffected.

Shortly after the hand-over to Lou Dobbs, a representative from the DoD made the statement that both the FBI and CERT regarded the current worms as "low impact". Dobbs responded, "It seems high-impact from where I'm sitting."

The worm story was still in focus during prime-time as commentators such as Kevin Mitnick offered advice and and insight about computer viruses to the CNN audience, and CNN staffers who were still having problems logging into the TURNER windows domain. Mitnick accurately pointed out that viruses often find their way onto corporate networks not by bypassing firewalls, but by being brought into the protected network environment via laptops infected elsewhere.

"There are several technical approaches that could avoid CNN's current situation," said Industrial Memetics Acting CEO Nick Levay, a widely respected expert on security issues. "A good example would be to require all laptops brought in from the outside world to only use the wireless network, and to treat that has a hostile network." Levay continued, "A quarantine zone of sorts is necessary to determine if machines being brought onto the network are carrying dangerous worms and/or viruses."

Rumors are passing around that the worms had similar effects on Capitol Hill, but Help Desk representatives were unavailable for comment at press time.

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