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."
According to a CNN article, the State Department shut down the network to prevent the spread of the virus. It was down from noon until 9PM on Tuesday. Shutting down a network on purpose is different from having it "fail" due to a virus.
There is no sig, there is only Zuul.
Some day soon there will be a class action lawsuit against M$ regarless of their 'Hold Harmless Agreement' in the EULA.
And BTW, firwall WON'T in and of themselves stop this kind of attack. Sure firewalls are your first line of defense, but all it takes is someone that has a notebook that is infected from home, a business trip or somewhere ELSE to bring it as a 'trusted' device on your clean network and BOINK, you are infected internally.
Some day soon there will be a class action lawsuit against M$ regarless of their 'Hold Harmless Agreement' in the EULA.
Actually, Business Week had an article about that a couple days ago, which I submitted last night (it was rejected). The author closed with (paraphrasing) "Maybe it's time some big customers refused to buy software without some sort of guarantee."
These last few worms and e-mail viruses seem to have become the collective last straw. The unwashed masses are finally beginning to grouse about buggy software-- the tide is slowly beginning to turn against onerous "no liability" EULAs coupled to expensive software that is critical to business.
A few years ago, Microsoft was very quick to whine that any delay in the release of Windows 98 forced on them by the government would hurt the U.S. economy and/or bring about the end of the world as we know it. Well, what about all these businesses who have to eat the costs of cleanup and lost productivity every time there's another Windows worm? Nooooo, that doesn't hurt the economy at all, does it?
~Philly