State Department PCs slammed by virus, by AP's Ted Bridis

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

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Date: Tue, 23 Sep 2003 22:22:57 -0700 (PDT)
From: Joseph Lorenzo Hall <jhall () sims berkeley edu>
To: Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>
Subject: State Department Computers Hit by Virus

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/technology/AP-State-Computer-Virus.html

State Department Computers Hit by Virus
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Filed at 11:37 p.m. ET

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The State Department's electronic system for
checking every visa applicant for terrorist or criminal history failed
worldwide for several hours late Tuesday because of a computer virus,
leaving the U.S. government briefly unable to issue visas.

The virus crippled the department's Consular Lookout and Support
System, known as CLASS, which contains more than 12.8 million records
from the FBI, the State Department and U.S. immigration,
drug-enforcement and intelligence agencies. Among the names are those
of at least 78,000 suspected terrorists.

[...]

It was unclear which computer virus might have affected the system.
But a separate message sent to embassies and consular offices late
Tuesday warned that the ``Welchia'' virus had been detected in one
facility. Welchia is an aggressive infection unleashed last month that
exploits a software flaw in recent versions of Microsoft Corp.'s
Windows software.

Collectively, Welchia and a related virus, ``Blaster,'' have infected
hundreds of thousands of computers worldwide, including computers at
the Federal Reserve in Atlanta, Maryland's motor vehicle agency and
the Minnesota Transportation Department.

[...]

Copyright 2003 The Associated Press



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Joseph Lorenzo Hall
Graduate Student                        http://pobox.com/~joehall

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