Since early August a new wave of computer viruses has been exploiting flaws in personal computers and computer networks across the country, Macalester’s network included. Still recovering from this summer outbreak, the Macalester department of Computer and Information Technology (CIT) has been aggressively fighting to improve campus-wide internet and e-mail service.

Three major viruses, SoBig.F, MSBlaster and Welchia hit the campus hard when returning and new students, faculty and staff arrived on campus for the fall semester. These viruses exploit a flaw in Microsoft Windows that allows malicious individuals to design code that replicates itself for distribution over local networks.

Viruses alone are not to blame for all of the campus’s network problems. In a statement sent to all Macalester e-mail addresses Sept. 9, CIT noted several other causes of recent slowdowns.

On Sept. 8 the campus suffered a denial of service attack from one or more off-campus computers. The attack sent thousands of false requests to the campus’s servers, bringing down Internet and e-mail access until the following day.

The attack also caused sporadic interruptions of academic servers and course e-mail lists.

While the denial of service attack has ended, CIT is still fighting virus infections all over campus.

Unlike many other famous viruses, SoBig.F, MSBlaster and Welchia don’t send e-mail after infecting a computer. Users often don’t know their computers are infected until they start noticing symptoms or find their network port disconnected by CIT.

Fortunately, most of the recent viruses have had a relatively benign intent. The load they put on networks is the main problem. Viruses have the potential for far worse behavior. Once attacker-defined code is running on a system, attackers could do anything that a user of the computer could do, including deleting documents and destroying vital system files.

Only one computer needed to be infected with one of these viruses to begin the infection of the network. CIT responded immediately by issuing an “SAV CD” with patches and updated anti-virus software and made it available through its offices and the library.

CIT reports that network staff is performing hourly checks of the network to identify problem computers and isolate them until the owner of the computer runs the SAV CD.

There are simple steps computer users can take to ensure they are not victims of the next virus outbreak.

1. Read the CIT bulletin and subscribe to their Notification-L e-mail. CIT releases regular reports of all current issues affecting the network and helpful links and contacts to address them.

2. Visit the CIT safe computing website at

http://www.macalester.edu/cit/safecomputing/ for free anti-virus software, operating system patches and answers to common questions.

3. Visit Microsoft’s security website, http://www.microsoft.com/security/protect/, to learn three easy steps to fix and prevent future outbreaks.

4. Get a Mac. The latest wave of viruses affects solely Windows XP based computers. Macintosh software is not of as much interest to would-be hackers, as many more networks use Windows.

Macalester’s CIT hopes that with time the problems will subside. In a statement to the Macalester community, Library and Information Services Vice President Joel Clemmer stated, “Please understand the we take all problems seriously and are putting our best efforts into fixing them. At this time of year, when the volume of requests far exceeds our ability to respond as quickly as you and we would like, we must prioritize and fix the most-mission critical and/or large-scale problems first.”