Macs are secure Ping!
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Posted on 02/01/2009 11:42:01 PM PST by Swordmaker
Three weeks after a virus infected computers across the Vancouver school district, information technology staff are being forced to attend to thousands of computers individually - and still have a long way to go before the system is running efficiently.
The virus hit most computers in the school district on January 7. Since the virus replicates itself from one computer to the next, staff were instructed to shut down every computer in the school district.
"My understanding is we weren't the only ones to get it," said Vancouver School Board chair Patti Bacchus, who acknowledged repairs have taken much longer than expected.
"Getting IT workers from school to school has been a slogging process."
VSB spokesman David Weir said he doesn't know how many tech workers are working on the problem.
There are more than 10,000 computers in the district, each of which had to be shut down and disconnected from the network, then individually scanned and repaired if necessary, said Weir.
An online student forum by Point Grey secondary students identified the virus as Win32.Krap.b trojan, a bug that affects mostly Windows operating systems, shutting down computers as soon as users try to start them.
Noel MacDonald, a Westside parent of an 11-year-old who attends Bayview elementary school, said many computers in his son's school have been marked with a red dot, signifying that the machine is so old it wouldn't be able to withstand the anti-virus program.
MacDonald said the school's Parent Advisory Council had paid for a computer lab with Macintosh machines, which haven't been affected.
Mohammad Akif, security and privacy lead at Microsoft Canada, told the Vancouver Sun someone on one of the district's computers could have downloaded an e-mail attachment containing a virus, visited a corrupt website, or used a USB stick and unknowingly transferred corrupt files from a home to school machine. Once the virus enters a computer system, it can attach itself to e-mails and documents, Akif said.
"The teachers are really upset about it," said Anna Ward, a grade 12 student at Lord Byng secondary school.
Ward and her fellow students are expecting mid-term exams soon, and she said there's little information on how they'll receive them.
While many computers are now working at Lord Byng, so many learning resources are kept within the computer system that instructors have found it difficult to work.
"It's really affected the teachers, who have to do everything at home. They couldn't record any marks or attendance," said Ward.
Weir said all student and staff-related data is safe, and IT staff focused their first efforts on sites related to the curriculum, such as school computer labs.
;^)>
If you want on or off the Mac Ping List, Freepmail me.
Win32.Krap.b — what an appropriate name.
“Noel MacDonald, a Westside parent of an 11-year-old who attends Bayview elementary school, said many computers in his son’s school have been marked with a red dot, signifying that the machine is so old it wouldn’t be able to withstand the anti-virus program.”
So, they’re more than two years old and they’re trying to install McAfee products on them, then? :P
See! Even virus-writers don’t support Macs!
It’s not for lack of trying.
And the whole “there’s not enough Macs for them to go after” argument doesn’t work when people are writing viruses for cell phone operating systems with less than 200,000 possible victims. There are millions of Macs running OS X today.
As of yet, no successful OS X virus has ever been found in the wild. (Social engineering exploits do not count against ANY platform IMHO as the only OS that they need to succeed is the several million year old one between people’s ears.)
**** iSnob PING!!!! ****
I find such news entertaining....better that 'Everybody Loves Raymond' and 'Lost' combined..... heheheehehe.
Looks like MS IE (plug-ins) is most susceptible for the trojan which is very malicious but doesn't seem to induce a high security risk:
Snippet and link to article if anyone is interested showing details for the bug:
o Submission received: 16 December 2008, 19:46:39
o Processing time: 5 min 38 sec
o Submitted sample:
+ File MD5: 0xDAD2CCF6919B794797B7E9C484A89A56
+ Filesize: 165,539 bytes
+ Alias:
# Trojan.Packed.NsAnti [Symantec]
# Packed.Win32.Krap.b [Kaspersky Lab]
# Generic PWS.ak [McAfee]
# Mal/Frethog-B [Sophos]
# PWS:Win32/Frethog.AJ [Microsoft]
# Trojan.Crypt.XPACK [Ikarus]
* Summary of the findings:
What's been found:
Downloads/requests other files from Internet. Modifies some system settings that may have negative impact on overall system security state.
Creates a startup registry entry.
Registers a 32-bit in-process server DLL.
Registers a Browser Helper Object (Microsoft's Internet Explorer plugin module).
Contains characteristics of an identified security risk.............
One of my favorite notations on helpdesk reports: PEBCAK.
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Problem Exists Between Chair And Keyboard.
Or even better, if they were running Ubuntu - it’s free and like Macs, no anti-virus is required.
And it’s free!
Or PICNIC “Problem In Chair, Not In Computer”. Heh.
I love Linux. Linux would’ve avoided this as well as a Mac, for no cost but those “IT” guys.
“Mohammad Akif, security and privacy lead at Microsoft Canada...”
And they’re wondering how the problem originated...
You don’t need a Mac. Just load Linux.
In that case Linux is the answer.
Linux would run great on those older boxes. They wouldn’t even need to upgrade the hardware in most cases. A simple, inexpensive solution.
A locked-down computer with automatic updates installed shouldn't need anti-virus software.
If they were all booting off a standard configuration, and if they didn't have local access to hardware [e.g. no ability to boot to floppy or boot to cd-rom] and if they had Active Directory [or Novell Directory Services] policies which locked down the access to the innards of the box, then none of this stuff could happen.
The very fact that staff had to physically visit each and every computer [instead of being able to remote-reinstall each computer] indicates to me that this was a haphazard, slipshod environment where a catastrophe was just waiting to happen.
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