Virus Takes Down US State Department's Computer Network Worldwide
 

We are all so vulnerable to these damn virus coders. Will it ever stop?


State Dept. Says Computers Hit by Virus

WASHINGTON - 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.

In an internal message sent late Tuesday to embassies and consular offices worldwide, officials cautioned that "CLASS is down due to a virus found in the system." There was no backup system immediately available, and officials said they could not predict how long the outage might last.

Within hours, the system was back up and running. A spokeswoman for the U.S. embassy in Seoul, Maureen Cormack, said it was a "short outage" and "not a major problem." She said interviews for visa applicants continued but any decisions could not be made until the system was back up.

In Washington, State Department spokeswoman Joanne Moore said the agency experienced some computer problems but could not confirm the visa-checking system was affected.

"We did have some computer problems," she said. "They're working on it."

Every visa applicant is checked against the names in the CLASS database. The State Department's automated systems are designed to not even print a visa until such a check is completed.

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 (news - web sites) in Atlanta, Maryland's motor vehicle agency and the Minnesota Transportation Department.

The State Department has invested heavily in the CLASS system since the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, more than doubling the number of names that applicants are checked against. One provision of the Patriot Act, passed just weeks after the attacks, added FBI records, including the bureau's violent gang and terrorist database. The list also includes the names of at least 20,000 people accused of serious Customs violations and the names of 78,000 suspected terrorists.

I thought you meant Visa (M/C) application.

:glugglug

Maybe they need to pay their system admins more $$.

Maybe have them read a book or two about security, antivirus and patch management once in a while.

Would be funny if it turns out to be a 12 year old kid.

<h1>OWNED!!!

Your American dollars hard at work unable to secure information safely with no Back ups! :thumbsup

"Welchia is an aggressive infection unleashed last month that exploits a software flaw in recent versions of Microsoft Corp.'s Windows software. "

Welcia is a little more than that, its a Screamer Virus. In otherwords it does not do damage persay but it will light up a network with so much noise its crazy.

If you could see the request amount on the network on a UNIX machine you would see the screen scrolling about 60 lines per second.

So even 1 PC on a network with Welchia will kill out a Network pretty good.

US government its called ANTI VIRUS by Symantec emmmk?
Get it.

No fucking shit. That's grade-school admin stuff. Yay homeland security...you dumb government fucks. Gee...ya think the gubmint could hire someone with 1st year sysadmin knowledge.

Hell, even at the home office I run Symantec's Enterprise Security on a server...keeps all the home machines and laptops updated automatically with new updates every 24 hours.

""Welchia is an aggressive infection unleashed last month that exploits a software flaw in recent versions of Microsoft Corp.'s Windows software. "

Notice the candor of the statement. It wants to place blame on Microsoft when the solutions are easily at hand and were availbalbe for sometime.

Credit solutions, leave the blame for looser's to ponder.