Virus Brings Down Computers at San Diego Court

San Diego Superior Court computers were infected with a virus that compelled employees to perform their tasks manually and leading to delay in public services, officials at the court said on April 17, 2008. They further said that the virus was noticed on April 14, 2008 following reports of odd behavior on the desktop.

According to employees, computers were frequently freezing or restarting, which prevented them from getting some of the programs to work. It was found that of the total 1,000 computers within the court's network, 100 got infected as a result of the virus. The affected computers would unexpectedly restart or freeze and sometimes even the login entries stopped working.

A court spokesperson said that employees were finding it difficult to access information relating to case details and court dates. The virus has prompted officials to disconnect all the court PCs from the state and county computer networks so that those networks remain free from the virus.

Meanwhile, the malware has been detected and brought under control. However, the computers at the court will remain shut down as the process of getting the problem fixed is underway. Additionally, when anti-virus companies identified the "Win32/Zilcat.A "virus for the first time last week, there wasn't any known cure at that time. Officials say the virus seems to have strained an estimated 500 or more organizations globally.

Court officials have urged people for calmness and requested those who require information to bring with them their court-prepared papers, tickets or courtesy notices when they next visit the court.

Karen Dalton, Public Information Officer of Superior Court, said that IT personnel of the court and third party vendors have separated the infected equipment from the system network to stop the virus from spreading. However, it is not known when the computers would be back for normal functioning, as reported by Fox6 on April 21, 2008.

In related news, the latest, Internet Security Threat Report, by Symantec, provider of anti-virus security, for the last six months of 2007 revealed that virus attacks on computers were rapidly increasing and that the number of such viruses crossed 1 Million.

Related article: Virus Infects Through USB Drives

» SPAMfighter News - 4/24/2008