--- Date: Tue, 23 Sep 2003 22:22:57 -0700 (PDT) From: Joseph Lorenzo Hall <jhall@private> To: Declan McCullagh <declan@private> Subject: State Department Computers Hit by Virus http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/technology/AP-State-Computer-Virus.html State Department Computers Hit by Virus By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Filed at 11:37 p.m. ET WASHINGTON (AP) -- The State Department's electronic system for checking every visa applicant for terrorist or criminal history failed worldwide for several hours late Tuesday because of a computer virus, leaving the U.S. government briefly unable to issue visas. The virus crippled the department's Consular Lookout and Support System, known as CLASS, which contains more than 12.8 million records from the FBI, the State Department and U.S. immigration, drug-enforcement and intelligence agencies. Among the names are those 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 Corp.'s Windows software. Collectively, Welchia and a related virus, ``Blaster,'' have infected hundreds of thousands of computers worldwide, including computers at the Federal Reserve in Atlanta, Maryland's motor vehicle agency and the Minnesota Transportation Department. [...] Copyright 2003 The Associated Press (In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.) ----------------------------------------------------------------- Joseph Lorenzo Hall Graduate Student http://pobox.com/~joehall EFF petition against RIAA mass litigation: http://tinyurl.com/nlib _______________________________________________ Politech mailing list Archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ Moderated by Declan McCullagh (http://www.mccullagh.org/)
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Wed Sep 24 2003 - 00:01:35 PDT