Virus Infection Collapses Territory Government’s E-Mail Server

According to the reports coming in from Australia, a malicious computer virus that propelled thousand of spam e-mails infected the e-mail server of territory government and ultimately, shut down it on September 3, 2008.

According to reports, the dissemination of the virus on the government e-mail system was so disastrous that the government office's work got delayed for many hours and several public servants had to take recourse to fax communications.

However, all this led to fast action, whereby IT security investigators found that the territory government's e-mail system had got infection from an employee of the government office itself. This resulted in bulk infection as the virus began sending spam messages immediately to the systems of other employees as well.

However, it was only by noon that the IT specialists and security researchers were able to spot the problem and eventually fix it, reinstating the lost e-mail accounts of the territory's 16,000 public servants back to work.

Meanwhile, Garry Haigh, Director of IT Services Management, confirmed that one of the government's computers was infected with the virus on September 2, 2008 and it began sending spam messages to other employees' accounts from 11 PM, as reported by Northern Territory News on September 4, 2008.

Haigh said that when the volume of spam became too high, his department put the government on an e-mail block list so that they could detect and resolve the problem.

Meantime, Haigh in common opinion with other IT specialists, security researchers and analysts added that there would be an investigation to determine the way the virus spread across the government's system.

According to him, in the current case, the virus possibly arrived via e-mail. According to him, a large number of computer viruses are concealed in e-mail attachments, the greatest potential zone for the entry of viruses.

Meanwhile, an alert was issued to public servants in the end week of August 2008 that two new viruses through spam mails had penetrated the government's anti-virus defenses.

Also, security experts stated that the government would have to initiate a formal action to withdraw itself from the e-mail block list.

Related article: Virus Infects Through USB Drives

» SPAMfighter News - 9/8/2008