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Houston Courts Shut Down By Malware
Conficker is still at it: dstates writes "The municipal courts of Houston were shut down yesterday after a computer virus spread through the courts' computer systems. The shutdown canceled hearings and suspended arrests for minor offenses and is expected to extend through Monday. The disruption affected many city departments, the Houston Emergency Center was briefly disconnected and police temporarily stopped making some arrests for minor offenses. The infection appears to be contained to 475 of the city's more than 16,000 computers, but officials are still investigating. Gray Hat Research, a technology security company, has been brought in on an emergency contract to eradicate the infection. In 2006, the City spent $10M to install a new computer system and bring the Courts online, but the system has been beset by multiple problems. After threatening litigation, the city reached a $5 million settlement with the original vendor, Maximus, and may seek another vendor."
It's amazing what can happen when you "lose" a few dozen pen drives with downadup at various strategic places.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
I hear you have an opening...
is smoking weed a minor offense in Houston?
Someone's getting canned.
Wow, so for all of 2-3 days, Americans living in Houston can actually live without fear of being arrested for things that we shouldn't be paying law enforcement tax payers' money to enforce? Hurry up and smoke your marijuana, Texans! Quick now, before the law gets back on its feet and decides to poke its head into your private, personal business.
Houston court (Your mums PC), was shutdown by malware, and Gray Hat Research (You) were brought in on an emergency contract (Called up from the basement) to eradicate the infection (reinstall windows XP)
The monoculture strikes again! My heart is bleeding peanut-butter right now. Having all your eggs in one basket (especially Microsoft's) is never a good idea.
"terrorism" and "pedophilia" are the root passwords to the Constitution
Is Houston being smart by hiring a company called "Gray Hat Research"?
If our elected representatives no longer represent us, do we still live in a Democracy?
Easy fix to this problem long term. Use a platform that the bad guys are unable to target for malware or viral attacks like OS X. Now all the effort in making malware-ridden U3 flash drives, making bogus parking tickets that go to bogus websites, or other social engineering will be all for naught.
After threatening litigation, the city reached a $5 million settlement with the original vendor, Maximus
IANAL, but I suspect defending yourself in court against the city (with the city representing the court) could be difficult.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
This story has nothing to do with Australia.
If I ever want to read about places besides Australia, I'll go to another site, thanks.
How much longer are we going to have to endure the non Australia-centric Slashdot?
Where the hell is kdawson?
I wonder, what operating system(s) were compromised by this infection?
Could it be -- say it isn't -- yet another outbreak of infestations on Windows machines?
If people haven't learned by this point not to trust Windows machines with anything critical, they deserve what they get. It's no longer a matter of ignorance as these things have been widely documented for decades.
From the article:
It sounds like this whole computerization effort was poorly executed from the get-go. Many such projects have problems, since they typically pit bumbling bureaucrats against shark-like consultants.
Anyway maybe they ought to take the database and just pull out the pending cases using ad hoc queries, and send the print-outs to the courthouse so they can get on with their work. This can't be rocket science here.
it's = "it is"; its = possessive. E.g., it's flapping its wings.
Social engineering can work on *any* OS (even the OS certified by NSA) . It is the user that needs to fixed.
the defense attorneys have been looking at pr0n again.
Just write and spread malware that targets computers at the Texas Dept. of Criminal Justice (along with everyone else's computers) on a date that's at some point into your sentence. Put code in the payload that searches for prison doors to open, in case we are infecting some controller they might be using. A long time ago before computers you had to tie four horses to the walls and bars of the jail and just try to pull the place apart without the ceiling collapsing on your friends' heads.
Or, rather, not. Pissed, as in drunk. This would be a great weekend to go out, get as drunk as I want, and not have to worry about spending the night in the drunk tank (Public Intoxication is a one-night stay in Houston, just plead no contest and you're out the next day).
But, no, I have to have a cold (just like about everyone else I know).
Shit!
PC moderators can suck my White pierced, tattooed dick. If you think pride == hate, s/dick/Aryan meat mallet/g.
...using Free software to fix this problem.
Maybe.
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." -- Goethe
It's as if a thousand bureaucrats cried out "Houston, we have a problem" in terror, and were suddenly silenced.
Yes, I agree. Some users really should be fixed.
Yes, in the veterinary sense.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Ok, so if these computers were used solely for official business, there wouldn't be this big of an issue. Lower paid workers tend not to have computers or internet at home, so they use work systems for "surfing." No internet access and email should only be via highly filtered webmail. USB, DVD drives and floppies locked off with zero access.
I used to work in Telecom. Our biggest malware/virus issues were at E911 centers even when the computers were on a dedicated network without any non-911 access. The nationwide 911 system doesn't use IP, so the problems didn't come from outside each 911 center. Those folks were paid $8/hr by cities and were under constant virus and malware attack from workers bringing programs in on diskettes, CDs and USB drives.
The other problem is the lack of understanding that many municipalities have over computer system maintenance. Many localities are smart and cautious, while many others treat work systems like home systems and hope for the best. Some have decided to provide free municiple wifi internet access with the same network their police and emergency services use for remote access. fools.
It tells you what they are running.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
back to Windows. Hmmmm, which flavor? I could choose W98, for it's lack of security model, or WXP (sp1) for it's failure to adhere to common sense security model, or Vista for it's infuriatingly intrusive security, or Win7 for it's unique beta insecurities. I KNOW!! I'll do ALL OF THEM AGAIN!!! (Who wants to be left out of the newest viral infection, anyway?)
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Some users really should be fixed [...] in the veterinary sense.
I don't see you volunteering.
It tells you what they are running.
The previous reply didn't show up, but it won't let me re-post it unless I change it. So this part is just the change.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
But emacs opened it as a dump of a binary file. I was bummed that they couldn't take the time to send me a proper virus for my architecture.
After threatening litigation, the city reached a $5 million settlement with the original vendor, Maximus, and may seek another vendor."
That's what happens when you buy your network from a vendor just because you liked their SimCity games.
Governments across this country are trying to fully phase in computers. It can't work.
Hey, I now have to deal with politicians, and it brushes off. I want things to be done to people that I wouldn't dream of allowing it to happen to me.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I try to stay away from the elitist argument/viewpoint, since it tends to lead to some nasty holier-than-thou social delineations.
They can have the best firewalls and anti-virus e-mail scanner on the planet but it takes ONE person with an infected laptop to plug it into the internal network and do it's dirty work without them knowing it in time.
It's possible they have been infected for months and didn't know it until things started to act funny.
To have that many PCs infected didn't surprise me as they didn't bother to take proper security precautions and audits. System admins didn't routinely check for viruses on their servers and didn't check their logs for anything out of the ordinary is asking for trouble.
I guess the system admins there figured, "Well, long as nobody is complaining about anything we're golden." It's possible they have a very small IT staff and outsource the security details to the vendor who they bought the system from who they are putting the blame on?
We have a security firewall appliance at work that does just about everything but I don't rely on it 100% to make sure it's doing it's job. I go through the logs daily and test it. Just have to be proactive on finding problems and fix it before anybody else notices it.
Perhaps, but somehow I doubt social engineering would be able to affect 475 computers as easily when they're using a non-Windows OS.
Don't let users run as admins. if you have programs that don't behave well in a least-priviledge environment, you can use privilegemanager http://www.beyondtrust.com/ I have used it in networks both large and small and it works very well. No spyware or viruses for over 5 years on a wide variety of Windows-based networks. Next best thing to switching to Linux.
Now all you have to do is get all 13,000 City of Houston employees to do that and that part of the problem is solved. At least it is for city of Houston employees. But then there's all the other installation methods including RPC. And the other million pieces of malware. And the millions of other computers.
It's easier just to get a mac.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
I just have to make sure the court jurisdiction where I'm in trouble gets a major virus infection so that they suspend arrests for minor offenses (why are they making arrests for minor things?) and put off trials.
It's pure simplicity!
Disclaimer: The opinions and actions of the US Gov't are in no way representative of those held by this author or its ci
That requires buying new hardware. Not in the budget. Much easier to justify an expensive consultant.
Besides, they may have some custom software that doesn't run under OSX. (Which excuse also works against Linux, BSD, etc.)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
The mayor had just purchased a site license for AV360, this should not have happened... ahem. Wonder if they can cancel that check that they wrote with QuackBooks 2009 and the official letters sent out with EMESS Werd 2009... hmmmmm...
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing. Emo Philips
Spreading actual physical papers on cars with a fake parking fine notification with links to a Web site to resolve the ticket issue where the site just dumps malware on the victim.
Now the infection of a court system.
Best way to take down a government today would be by taking down their computer systems.
Skynet did it on "Terminator" a few episodes ago - sent a guy back through time to insert a "roving backdoor" onto the government's systems, so once Skynet gets created it will have immediate access to government and corporate systems. And Derek and Jesse screwed up by not finding out about the plan from Fischer, the guy they caught who did it.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Buhwaaaaa
Get up!
So which type of Linux are they running in Houston?
Sounds like they need to switch distros.
Could some anti-virus on each machine have stopped this?
I stand by what I said. Or else I would have posted anonymously.
As for elitist, whatever you say, slick. I've wrestled with those arguments more than anyone I know. It's an ethical dilemma, no doubt.
But you know what I have to say, at the end of the night (well, not quite - I still have a few beers left)? Fuck it. Bill Hicks was right when he said Hitler was just an underachiever. Tool was right to dedicate an album, in memorial, to him. One that contained the song "Aenema" on it.
That's right...learn to swim, motherfuckers. Because if you keep it up, you'll be neck deep in sewage and corpses. You can only build so many dams in the path of evolution before it backs up and chokes your ass.
PC moderators can suck my White pierced, tattooed dick. If you think pride == hate, s/dick/Aryan meat mallet/g.
rm -rf juryduty
They use court stenographers...
"Who have been using computers for twenty years to my certain knowledge."
The statement "... using computers for twenty years..." may give an erroneous impression. They've been using extremely proprietary and poorly designed computer programs for that long. The programs are proprietary so that the makers can get as much money as possible, and that limits access.
Quote from the site to which you linked: "Appellate ECF Filer Registration -- The U.S. Courts of Appeals and Bankruptcy Appellate Panels are beginning to accept electronic case filings." [my emphasis]
Remember it started as a virus.
Reading this stuff drives me crazy. This would never have happened if the court had used more (or at least some) Macs.
I mean seriously, why do institutions like this believe that one type of computer fits all? Sure, I can certainly see where some people need software that is exclusive (or most practical) to Windows. Fine.
Does the fellow doing legal research REALLY need Windows? Does the stenographer REALLY need Windows? Does that weird guy who spends most of his day surfing pr0n and playing Solitaire REALLY need Windows?
It's not like there are 10,000 valid Operating Systems around. For all intents and purposes there are THREE (four if you count the server room). If each employee in a court, a hospital, a defense station, a navy ship or anywhere else a virus can strike had simply diversified the OSes used based on actual needs, we'd never again have this kind of paralyzing large-scale system disruption again.
Makes me worry that our electrical/nuclear grid is being controlled by machines that are one virus away from failing ...
"...and may seek another vendor."
Macs maybe?
If I didn't have absolutely NOTHING to do, I wouldn't be here.
You obviously don't mean the city of Hoston.
Apparently lots of people don't do all of the best practice mods before they clone. Those people shold get a mac - for their protection and ours.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
If you want to call your OS super secure ("certified by NSA"), then I hope it does not allow unsigned binaries to run.
Dear Slashdot Editors,
Please make it clear to users that mod points are to be used with the appropriate "Category" flag. Some users are using such flags as "Troll" and "Flamebait" for posts that should be, if modded at all, flagged as "Off-Topic".
I suspect it has to do with their personal sociopolitical beliefs. Hence the signature that I have maintained for at least 3-4 years. As a fellow geek, I believe in accuracy. Despite my frequent usage of flagrant profanity and quoting of non-scientific sources which may or may not be known to some of the users who moderate discussions, I feel that a simple look-up in Wikipedia prior to modding a post would be courteous.
For example, in above post, it would have been rather easy for the person(s) who modded my post as "Troll" and "Flamebait" to look up the highly controversial statement made by Bill Hicks in a (in)famous comedic session and realize that it was not a racist comment, but a observation on the sad state of the human race. The Tool song mentioned is a similar commentary, and entirely appropriate in the context.
If the same moderation had been applied to the parent post, I would find it more rational. However, since it was not, I find the rational inconsistent.
And, yes, I've been here long enough to know better. But it never fails to blow my mind that a site for allegedly intelligent, technical, educated people becomes mired down in petty political or social differences.
Thank your for your time.
Regards,
Painehope
PC moderators can suck my White pierced, tattooed dick. If you think pride == hate, s/dick/Aryan meat mallet/g.