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."

Comments

Heads should roll...

[ubiquitin]

So who's responsible for IT security there? If they've outsourced IT security to Microsoft or Symantec, then it is well past time to fire them and put some linux or unix-based (low-cost high-availability) servers up. Ask any Linux sysadmin how they survived the last two months worth of email virus bombardments. Then ask a Microscrap Exchange administrator. Do some simple math on the time and therefore money involved with maintenance of these systems. Why is no-one outraged about the tax dollars being wasted on cleanup of Microsoft-platform based email viruses?

Re:78 THOUSAND suspected terrorists?

[YeeHaW_Jelte]

If the US government actually cared about human lives, it would be spending this type of attention on automobile safety (50k dead a year in US) or malaria (>1 million dead a year worldwide) or cancer (half a million dead in US per year). Funny you mentioned malaria, cause I read the other day that Bill Gates just donated 168 million or so for malaria research. So we have a government spending money on getting microsoft to store their list of 78,000 terrorists, money which was better spent on malaria research, but which is actually donated by Bill Gates, chairman of the above mentioned software company that money was spent on uselessly.

Re:78 THOUSAND suspected terrorists?

[merlin_jim]

In many ways these people's rights are now forfeit.

Bullshit. These people are foreign citizens; what rights exactly do they have in the sovereignity of the United States that are now forfeit? All the rights guaranteed to them by national and international law are still in place; the only thing being denied them is entry into the United States, and if you're not a citizen of the US, you have no RIGHT to come here...