01.22.10
British Universities Under Siege Because of Microsoft Windows, One Goes Offline
Summary: Despite the propaganda from Microsoft liars such as Rob Enderle, Windows Vista is proving to be a serious menace to massive operations which were foolish enough to permit its use
JIM Allchin, Gartner, Enderle and other familiar mouthpieces of Microsoft have all lied about Windows Vista being the most secure operating system ever.
Last year we learned that many British hospitals (e.g. [1, 2]) became victims of Conficker. It affected all versions of Windows. British academic institutions too are victims of Microsoft’s shoddy products. Several hours ago everyone in the campus of Manchester University received the following E-mail:
Windows Vista – Virus Outbreak
Please be aware of a major virus outbreak effecting computers with the Windows Vista operating system. The virus can infect all computers that do not have the KB975517 patch installed. In order to ensure that you are not infected with this virus you will need check that you have operating system updates turned on, for information on how to do this please visit the Hornet official website;
[...]
Please can you make sure you follow the Hornet Security and Safe computing security steps
Security and Safe computing
We would also like to take this opportunity to reiterate the importance of making sure your computer is protected. It is important to ensure that you have followed the following security steps:
1. Keep your firewall turned on. Learn about firewalls.
2. Keep all your software and your operating system up-to-date. Learn about operating system updates.
3. Keep your antivirus software up to date. Learn about antivirus software.
4. Keep your antispyware technology up to date. Learn about antispyware technology.
According to The Register, Exeter University has just gone offline due to Windows malware:
The University of Exeter took the unusual step of temporarily taking its network down this week in response to a virulent virus outbreak.
Computers at the south west England university were taken offline on Monday for a clean-up in response to an unidentified malware outbreak, which has since been contained.
By Thursday the vast majority of the network was back up and running, according to the Uni’s lastest status update. Exeter is the seat of learning for 15,000 students with three campuses, two in Exeter and a smaller facility in Cornwall.
David Allen, registrar and deputy chief executive of the university, told students and lecturers that taking the campus network offline was a necessary step in fighting the infection, which came in through “PCs running Microsoft Windows Vista Service Pack 2″.
“Ah well,” says Richard Rasker, “a complete university with 15,000 students on three campuses taken down for half a week … Windows sure is great.”
When approximately one in two Windows PCs is a zombie PC, the above is to be expected. E-mail too is suffering a great deal from Windows zombies and according to this new report from the UK, about 95% of E-mail gets spewed from Windows botnets.
ACCORDING TO ENISA, the European cyber security agency, only about 5 per cent of all emails are actually delivered to inboxes.
Regarding the above, one reader told us by E-mail: “Windows botnets are costing over a third of Europe’s ISP each over a million dollars cleaning up after Bill’s spam.” █
