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."

Comments

Re:Oops

[Z00L00K]

Especially since today almost every computer is delivered with autorun enabled.

We have seen far too many malicious attacks due to the fact that someone thought that it has to be "user friendly". But some of that user friendliness is just plain annoying and raises the blood pressure. Just because I have a few pictures on my stick doesn't mean that I want to view them every time I stick it in.

The problem is that "user friendly" often means "attack friendly".