Worm vs. Worm Battle Slows Networks

joel_archer writes "According this article at the DrudgeReport, a worm, apparently designed to patch MSBlaster infected Win2K and XP machines, brings various Canadian networks to a crawl. Hardest hit was the 411 system, Air Canada, and Ontario hydro electric operations. Apparently this is causing more problems than MSBlaster itself."

Comments

Re:Windows servers

[kahei]

But, we have had some problems with it. One day, it kept popping up a stupid dialog saying that the computer is too hot

Ha! No *real* OS would ever warn about overheating! Real OSes just die!

Later that same day, it popped up with a stupid message saying that had automatically downloaded and installed updates and patches for us.

Ha ha! How pathetic, it automatically downloads patches when configured to do so! A REAL OS would rely on the Patch Fairy!

See, this is a problem with putting gas station attendants in charge of computers.

Re:I agree

[Pig Hogger]

What kind of sick airline uses Windows servers to do check in and track flights/passengers. Is their IT department completely slow? They deserve what they get.

Many years ago, Air Canada absorbed Canadian (Pacific) Airlines, which had deliberately poison-pilled it's IT systems in order to make that merger painfuller. It so happenned that the Canadian (Pacific) Airline IT guys gained control of the Air-Canada IT department, and began kicking-out the flawlessly functionning OS/2 systems that were the rule, and introduced Winblows boxen. Ever since, Air-Canada has been going down, narrowly escaping bankrupcy a few weeks ago...

so many trolls in this hole.

[twitter]

multiple firewalls .. worth nothing if your users dont protect their networks at home.

Perfect. It's not your fault for recomending and using Microsoft crap, it's your user's fault for not taking precations? No, the root cause of this failure is in Redmond, but your use of their crap is a larger contributing cause to your company's problems than anything any of your users do. Take responsibility for your decisions and fix that mess the right way. How many times are you going to shell out big bucks only to be burnt by the next Microsft Transmitted Disease?

It is way past time to dump Windows. It's not hard to do, really, and you will be much better off in the long run to start using free software now. Good luck cleaning that mess up. Don't be too hard on the owner of that laptop, there were as many ways for that thing to get on your network as IE has exploits. When you finish restricting your users to things that are "safe" on an M$ network, what exactly will you be providing your users? Free software requires far fewer restrictions while offereing much better services and ease of data trasport. When you factor worms like this and bandwith costs for "patching" into your TCO, free software is a real bargain.