+Daemon+
August 27th, 2003, 10:26 AM
Well it looks like the county I work for (Riverside County, in southern california) was in the news papers this morning about how bad we got infected by the blaster worm, funny thing is out of all the departments mine department was the only one that was not affected... nice eh? oh ya cause I work here muahhahha
any who here is the article.
==================SNIP=======================
Worm's cost tops $1 million
BLASTER: The computer invader kept county technicians and others working long
hours.
01:48 AM PDT on Wednesday, August 27, 2003
By DAVID SEATON / The Press-Enterprise
A computer worm that infected networks across the globe cost Riverside County
$1 million to fight, Steve Reneker, the chief information officer, told
supervisors Tuesday.
The figure surprised some supervisors, who along with other county employees
had their Internet and e-mail service interrupted periodically starting nearly
two weeks ago.
Outside computer users also could not connect to the county's Web site or
search through other computerized information, such as court records. Reneker
said he thought the system was down for a total of 12 hours.
Supervisor Bob Buster asked Reneker whether the county could get reimbursed by
Microsoft, the software provider.
"They sell us this stuff at great costs," Buster said. "It is faulty, it is
not secure and safe, and it is vulnerable to these continuing attempts to
sabotage."
But Reneker said a better solution is to fund law enforcement efforts to catch
the perpetrators. Better internal education and preparedness would also help,
he said.
Some county departments did not implement a directive in July to patch all the
computers against such attacks, Reneker said.
The worm probably came in through a laptop plugged into the county's network
by an employee. Reneker declined to identify the department in which the worm
was first detected. But that laptop should have been scanned for problems in
accordance with county policy, Reneker said.
Because of the worm, dubbed Blaster, and its variants, all 12,500 personal
computers and 500 servers had to be patched, Reneker said.
The $1 million cost stems from a team of 20 technicians working on the problem
around the clock, Reneker said, plus the efforts of 600 professionals in the
Information Technology Department.
"We just came out with a security policy two months ago," Reneker said. "Every
employee is required to read and sign.
"People need to understand to take security seriously," he added, and make
sure that the patches and security systems are kept as current as possible.
Reneker said costs continue to mount because four departments are still
cleaning up worm occurrences. Two other computer infections this year cost the
county $198,000 and $60,000, respectively, he added.
Computers at the city of Riverside, which uses Riverside County's Internet
domain, were also infected.
Communications officer Sharon Cooley said the city has spent about $4,000 in
labor costs to fix a second worm that appeared after Blaster.
"We've been doing a lot of patching, which takes a lot of staff time," Cooley
said.
=====================SNIP=====================
any who here is the article.
==================SNIP=======================
Worm's cost tops $1 million
BLASTER: The computer invader kept county technicians and others working long
hours.
01:48 AM PDT on Wednesday, August 27, 2003
By DAVID SEATON / The Press-Enterprise
A computer worm that infected networks across the globe cost Riverside County
$1 million to fight, Steve Reneker, the chief information officer, told
supervisors Tuesday.
The figure surprised some supervisors, who along with other county employees
had their Internet and e-mail service interrupted periodically starting nearly
two weeks ago.
Outside computer users also could not connect to the county's Web site or
search through other computerized information, such as court records. Reneker
said he thought the system was down for a total of 12 hours.
Supervisor Bob Buster asked Reneker whether the county could get reimbursed by
Microsoft, the software provider.
"They sell us this stuff at great costs," Buster said. "It is faulty, it is
not secure and safe, and it is vulnerable to these continuing attempts to
sabotage."
But Reneker said a better solution is to fund law enforcement efforts to catch
the perpetrators. Better internal education and preparedness would also help,
he said.
Some county departments did not implement a directive in July to patch all the
computers against such attacks, Reneker said.
The worm probably came in through a laptop plugged into the county's network
by an employee. Reneker declined to identify the department in which the worm
was first detected. But that laptop should have been scanned for problems in
accordance with county policy, Reneker said.
Because of the worm, dubbed Blaster, and its variants, all 12,500 personal
computers and 500 servers had to be patched, Reneker said.
The $1 million cost stems from a team of 20 technicians working on the problem
around the clock, Reneker said, plus the efforts of 600 professionals in the
Information Technology Department.
"We just came out with a security policy two months ago," Reneker said. "Every
employee is required to read and sign.
"People need to understand to take security seriously," he added, and make
sure that the patches and security systems are kept as current as possible.
Reneker said costs continue to mount because four departments are still
cleaning up worm occurrences. Two other computer infections this year cost the
county $198,000 and $60,000, respectively, he added.
Computers at the city of Riverside, which uses Riverside County's Internet
domain, were also infected.
Communications officer Sharon Cooley said the city has spent about $4,000 in
labor costs to fix a second worm that appeared after Blaster.
"We've been doing a lot of patching, which takes a lot of staff time," Cooley
said.
=====================SNIP=====================