Virus from ‘Michael Jackson’ e-mail renders computers inoperable at medical center

According to the reports published during the 1st week of July, 2009, a peculiar PC virus has led to the collapse of numerous computers at Saint Alphonsus Regional Medical Center.

Actually, an employee at the Center had downloaded a file attached to a Michael Jackson spam mail on July 1, 2009 that led to the incident.

Understandably, the harmful virus resulted in loss of operation on about 300-400 PCs from approximately 4,500 workstations at the Saint Alphonsus, said Kristen Micheletti, Spokeswoman for Saint Al's. Idahostatesman.com published this on July 7, 2009.

However, according to Micheletti, the inoperable PCs have been replaced with other computers/laptops, with the change over done particularly in clinical domains.

Micheletti also said that different things were happening like delayed log-ins, software programs abruptly closing, glitches..., while an entire team of experts were engaged in setting everything back to normal.

Meanwhile, the IT staff at the hospital said that the malicious virus did not cause risk to any lives and also didn't interrupt any treatment, although the problem was yet to be resolved wholly.

Security experts, meanwhile, suggest users to be careful while opening e-mails that use the star's name. They say, while there is nothing wrong in getting touched, such feelings, nonetheless, could result in glitches, causing serious issues as has occurred at Saint Al's.

They further say that since the hospital laptops and computers were taken offline on time, it largely helped to save patient related information from getting destroyed that could have resulted in problems both technical and manual.

In the meantime, ever since Michael Jackson bid farewell on June 25, 2009, malware purveyors and spammers have been doing their utmost to reap the maximum advantage from the pop star's tragic death.

Actually, cyber-criminals seem to be prone to using any prominent incident surrounding celebrities or anyone known in the political or social sphere to distribute malicious spam. When Pope John Paul II died in 2005, online miscreants distributed spam messages that claimed to sell a tribute DVD. Likewise, following Saddam Hussein's execution during June 2006, spammers once again took the opportunity to send out junk e-mails.

Related article: Virus Infects Through USB Drives

» SPAMfighter News - 7/28/2009