Computer Virus NOTICE !!! :wtf:

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cablewithaview

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Computer Virus NOTICE !!!

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A computer worm shut down computer systems running the Windows 2000 operating system across the United States on Tuesday, hitting computers at CNN, ABC and The New York Times.

Around 5 p.m. computers began crashing at CNN facilities in New York and Atlanta. ABC said its problems began in New York about 1:30 p.m.

The Caterpillar Co. in Peoria, Illinois also was reportedly affected.

David Perry of Trend Micro said that the attack seems to have been triggered by a new worm, called worm--rbot.ebq. He said the symptoms -- computers repeatedly shutting down and rebooting -- was consistent with that virus.

Johannes Ullrich, director of the Sans Institute, a network security firm in Jacksonville, Florida, said the outage also may have been caused by the Zotob worm, which was released last weekend.

"It will connect to a control server to ask for instructions. It scans network neighborhoods and tries to infect them, as well," Ullrich said.

Several versions of the worm have been released, some as late as Tuesday, he said.

While the worm primarily affects Windows 2000, it also can affect some early versions of Microsoft XP, he said.

Typically, the virus enters a system via a laptop connected to unsecured networks, Ullrich said. "This laptop will infect your systems from the inside."

Microsoft has made a patch to counter Zotob, he said.

At any given time, there are thousands of computer worms and viruses in existence. Most are stopped from becoming widespread problems by anti-virus software. :wtf:

sources: (Cbandtalk) CNN
 
I can confirm the Caterpillar affliction. Father in law said it shut down the entire network..
 
cablewithaview said:
Microsoft has made a patch to counter Zotob
That news report is incorrect. Microsoft had a patch available a few days before this virus came out. Our company had zero problems with this worm.
 
Microsoft had fixed it but the patch wasn't applied to all the computers. As is with any major company, patches are investigated before they are installed in the main network. 255 companies were affected before it was brought under control. Arrests have been made as of this week.
 
Also, let me add that there are a lot of Process Control installations where the users are paranoid about making any changes to a working system, especially to the OS. They are also notoriously adverse to running AV software since it "takes too many CPU cycles". Keeping these systems isolated from any machines that have Internet access is essential.
 
If you're letting your users drive the focus of your network security, you're asking for problems. I do agree with the point about keeping project-critical equipment isolated from anything but physical access. However, those systems still need their own redundancy and recovery systems and procedures in place. The statement about allowing some users to avoid running an anti-virus package because of CPU utilization is absurd. Evaluate a different anti-virus package (anything but McAfee). Again, if the equipment is isolated from network traffic, exceptions can be made, provided necessary recovery systems as mentioned above are in place.
 
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