It was a bug in code not a virus....see a lot of cobol programmers used two digits for dates instead of four. Luckely a lot of us hardwokign schlubs put in 80 hr weeks in 97 and 98 to make sure nothing bad happen leading to a lot of newer it folks thinking the issue was all hype. I personaly watched automated assembaly lines grind to a halt during date rollover testing in the late 90's (just in time assembly decided it had 100 years before the component needed to be built so it stoped).

It was a very serious error (or more correctly a lot of very serious errors comeing from the same programming practice) we just fixed it in time.

If the story was every truly told it would be a great victory for us poor IT schlubs, we actualy did somethign right...unfortunitly that story is boring, and well most people want to blame it not praise us.