FBI told about PC-viruses at City College

Officials from San Francisco's City College have drawn the attention of FBI to PC-viruses that out of criminal networks inflicted campus PCs, thus published SFGate in news on February 7, 2012.

Reportedly, using the services of USDN Inc. a company offering computer security, the college is attempting at finding out the extent of the viruses' dissemination as well as the information, if at all that has been illegitimately transmitted beyond the campus boundary to intermediate entities.

Incidentally, it was on November 28, 2011 that the viruses were first noticed as USDN tracked down 723 IP addresses linked with offensive networks that performed hacking across China, Russia and other countries. As per the computer security firm, the viruses, since 1999, had been hanging around within the weakly-protected systems of the college, sending data outside the institution daily at 10 p.m.

And though all of the prominent data systems of the college seemed alright, security researchers discovered that a few persons had utilized contaminated PCs for conducting personal banking operations. Consequently, City College got in touch with the FBI presuming that somebody compromised personal information, according to the institution's Chief Technology Officer, David Hotchkiss, reports SFGate.

Additionally, on becoming aware of the computer hacking incident, the college tentatively locked its laboratory containing the contaminated PC as well as disconnected the server from the Net, which had been sending out captured data abroad. And while the volume of data transmitted isn't known, servers having campus members' medical data apparently escaped the viruses' onslaught.

Further, as no victim transpired due to the viruses, many college officials and faculties opine that the problem isn't so severe the way Hotchkiss describes. Moreover as per chairman of the department of computer science, Craig Persiko, the claim about the latest virus assault was exaggerated. He was speaking to the Board of Trustees and SFGate published it.

Notably, USDN describes the viruses' current status in a report it has submitted, while Griffin says, the report is an ongoing activity as it doesn't state the time by when the PCs would become sanitized, adding that he'll engage another agency for doing a re-examination.

Related article: FBI’s ICCC Annual Report Discusses Fraudulent and Non-Fraudulent Complaints

» SPAMfighter News - 2/13/2012