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Time Bomb May Have Destroyed 800 Norfolk City PCs' Data

Posted by timothy on from the philadelphia-experiment dept.

krebsonsecurity writes "The City of Norfolk, Virginia is reeling from a massive computer meltdown in which an unidentified family of malicious code destroyed data on nearly 800 computers citywide. The incident is still under investigation, but city officials say the attack may have been the result of a computer time bomb planted in advance by an insider or employee and designed to trigger at a specific date, according to krebsonsecurity.com. 'We don't believe it came in from the Internet. We don't know how it got into our system,' the city's IT director said. 'We speculate it could have been a time bomb waiting until a date or time to trigger. Whatever it was, it essentially destroyed these machines.'"

10 of 256 comments (clear)

  1. Just so you get the pronunciation right... by Overzeetop · · Score: 5, Funny

    It's Naw-Fuck.

    And it's nowhere near as embarrassing as how we pronounce Buena Vista.

    --
    Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
    1. Re:Just so you get the pronunciation right... by wintercolby · · Score: 3, Funny

      Yes, and their Highschool cheer is:
      We don't drink! We don't smoke! Norfolk! Norfolk!

      Pronounced as specified above.

      --
      Most ignorance is vincible ignorance. We don't know because we don't want to know. --Aldous Huxley
    2. Re:Just so you get the pronunciation right... by xaxa · · Score: 4, Funny

      It's Naw-Fuck.

      In proper Norfolk... well, I'll let Wikipedia explain: More cutting, perhaps, was the pejorative medical slang term "Normal for Norfolk", referencing the county's supposedly high rate of incest. In truth, Norfolk's incest rate is no higher than the rest of England. The term is now discredited, and its use is discouraged by the profession.

      (Sorry, did you want an on-topic comment?)

    3. Re:Just so you get the pronunciation right... by AndersOSU · · Score: 1, Funny

      Nah, it'll be your effete voice, meticulous faggy pronunciation, and vocabulary that contains words like effete.

    4. Re:Just so you get the pronunciation right... by mjwalshe · · Score: 2, Funny

      theres also sterorytype of the norfolk native. "I cant read or write but I can drive a trakter"

  2. Wait a minute.. by VMaN · · Score: 1, Funny

    ... this is the internet... Isn't the apostrophe in the title supposed to be further to the left? :|

    I had to read it twice to confirm it was used correctly.

  3. sort and compress makes small backups by davidwr · · Score: 2, Funny

    When you sort the bits first compressed backups are really small.

    --
    Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
  4. Re:I bet they just got Religion by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    put the camera in the light locked compartment, stuck my hands in, just to find that he had taken 36 'priceless vacation pictures' on the back of the camera body instead of film.

    Now, that's what I called a Kodak Moment (TM).

  5. Re:It happened on Patch Tuesday. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    I've got this brick I bought from Home Depot. If you repair it, it will be a fully working computer.

  6. Re:Norfolk's IT is fail. by u38cg · · Score: 3, Funny

    There are a million and one legitimate ways that this could be done by a rouge admin.

    Dude, I could do that, and I'm not even vermillion :p

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    [FUCK BETA]