“Many versions of Windows are at risk,” BBC News reports. “Disruption caused by a new internet virus known as Sasser is showing signs of worsening. In two separate cases, companies in Taiwan and Finland reported the worm had disrupted their computers. Sasser, unlike a virus which travels through e-mails and attachments, spreads directly from the internet.”
“It attacks recent versions of Microsoft’s Windows causing the computer to shut down. Experts believe millions of computers may be infected. In Moscow a computer security firm warned of a possible major epidemic,” BBC News reports. “Microsoft has acknowledged that the worm is spreading but played down the threat. ‘It seems to me an exaggeration to say that millions of computers have been affected,’ said Bernard Ourghanlian, Microsoft’s technical director in France.”
“Sasser attacks recent versions of Windows 2000, Windows Server 2003 and Windows XP,” BBC News reports. The computer has to be rebooted several times but appears to suffer no lasting damage. ‘Worst affected will be small and medium-sized businesses that don’t have the resources to update their anti-virus software,’ said Mark Grady, principal consultant at IT consultants Intraliant. ‘Large corporations have the time and money and will have updated their patches,’ Mr Grady said. A Microsoft patch was released on 13 April and revised on 28 April. Internet users have been warned that they are more likely to get the virus the more they surf the web.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: So, small and medium-sized businesses are screwed, but it’s okay that large corporations can waste untold (and for some reason never totalled) amounts of time and money? Foolishness knows no bounds. If you belong to that small subset of Windows users that like to use the Internet, you’ve been warned. Try to surf less or not at all, okay? If you’re finally tired of downloading and installing patches to patch patches that patched patches issued to fix patches that broke while patching a patch that didn’t patch the first patch, but broke the last patch you patched, you might want to try a Mac instead. More information about adding a Mac OS X machine to your computing arsenal here.
To those who didn’t read the article properly, I don’t work for Microsoft, I work for an independent IT consultancy.
I also never said people who surf more are more likely to get Sasser, and the article doesn’t attribute that comment to me anyway.
Incidentally, although I have Microsoft qualifications, I’m also a Mac user and a qualified Apple support technician. I know that MacOS and all the Macs ever built are better than anything Wintel have ever turned out, so where you guys get off hurling abuse my way is beyond me.