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Virus Knocks Out U.S. Visa Approval System

Posted by timothy on from the tax-funded-monoculture-gets-blight dept.

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."

2 of 439 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Windows Means Work by Morosoph · · Score: 5, Informative

    Time again to post an article on The Broken Windows fallacy.

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    Wikileaks, no DNS
  2. My sister works there. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Evidently, the virus was patched/cleaned pretty quickly, and there was no real security risk, as in national security, because when the system is down, they simply do not issue visas. Most places they probably just told people to come back tomorrow.