Slashdot Mirror
Virus Knocks Out U.S. Visa Approval System
GillBates0 writes "According to this story and many others, the State Department's electronic system for checking every visa applicant for terrorist or criminal history failed worldwide late Tuesday because of a computer virus, leaving the U.S. government unable to issue visas. The virus crippled the department's Consular Lookout and Support System, known as CLASS, which contains, among others, names 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 Windows."
Go ahead, make fun.
Maybe this was so Microsoft could import more foreign programs to fix their bugs.
Not trying to bash Microsoft but....
I assumed that ppl who run critical services were not from that class of "Internet guys who just want to check their email and browse the web, and don't even know what a patch is".
So, my question is: Why in hell does anybody uses a system that has a track record of so many bugs, virus, crashes, etc ?
I see this more and more: A "breakthrough" is made by some stupid CEO in a companny and in a matter of weeks everything is run under windows. Why ? because it integrates better... "we now have single sign on... for virus too: they just get in one computer and can spread around easily"!!!!
Damn stupid morons...
"Doesn't the state department realize some people, other than themselves, have lives and expenses too?"
They're government bureaucrats. Worse, they're government bureaucrats who spend most of their time dealing with foreigners, not even Americans. Why should they care? It's not as though any of them will lose their job over this, they'll probably be given _more_ money to hire computer security staff.
Government bureaucrats don't give a damn about anything because if they do a bad job they won't get sacked and they will get more money to "fix" their problems. If you don't realise that, you won't understand much about how the modern world works.