System is down despite emergencies
Scottish hospitals laid low by malware infection
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The infection of laboratory PCs at the Stobhill and Gartnavel General hospitals meant the bookings of 12 patients attending the Beatson West of Scotland Cancer Care Centre in Glasgow were postponed, The Glasgow Herald reports. Systems were taken offline for two days to allow computer technicians to clean up the mess.
The Herald compares the outbreak to the infection of systems at three London hospitals by the MyTob worm four months ago. The malware outbreak at St Bartholomew's, the Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel and The London Chest Hospital meant ambulances had to be briefly sent to other hospitals and meant that some appointments had to be rescheduled. In a small number of cases, medical staff had to fall back onto pen and paper backup systems. An independent review concluded the outbreak was "entirely avoidable".
Conficker modified for more mayhem
According to Symantec the Conficker worm has been modified to cause more damage. Previously the worm had only contacted about 250 domains a day, to look for commands and download new code. Symantec report that there is a new variant of Conficker using an algorithm which will contact up to 50,000 domains a day.