“Coastguard stations around the UK have been severely disrupted after a computer worm brought down IT systems. The Sasser worm has hit all 19 coastguard stations and the service’s headquarters, leaving officers reliant on pens and paper. But there was no danger to the public, a UK Maritime and Coastguard Agency spokeswoman said,” BBC News reports. “Its computer mapping facilities were not working but staff were still able to use paper maps, she added. The Sasser bug has affected coastguard logging operations but left its command and control systems and lifesaving equipment unaffected.”
BBC News reports., “Coastguards are still able to use telephones and radios but fax and telex machines have been put out of action. The Sasser worm infects [Windows OS] computers via the internet. The coastguard service is the latest casualty of the bug, which is thought to have affected millions of Windows PC users since it was first discovered on 1 May.”
“Unlike recent viruses, Sasser does not travel by e-mail but makes its way around the internet unaided. It can infect PCs running Windows 2000 and Windows XP that are not protected against the system loophole it exploits,” BBC News reports. “According to anti-virus firms, machines running Windows 95, 98 and Millennium Edition can help spread Sasser even though they cannot be infected by it.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Computers running Apple’s Mac OS X are not affected by the Sasser worm. More information about how easy it is to add a Mac OS X machine to your computing arsenal here.
That canned press release is known of a “spin”. I wonder if anyone at the DoD and DHS is paying attention.
Makes me sick to see that organisations as essential as coastguards are using swiss cheese shite software. Glad I’m not a sailor. We can only pray that air traffic control use something else…
Come on people – switch to Mac, you’ll never look back.
I have a mac at work and I was affected. The whole damn network was shut down.
It is amazing such an organization uses cheap computers, cheap software and apparently doesn’t have money for IT people to keep up to date with patches & virus definitions. We need some big time cost of ownership studies!
A major Finnish bank closed it’s doors for half a day because of Sasser. You’d think they would have learned to protect their networks before this. But no.
The patch to secure Windows against this worm has been available for a fortnight. If you look after a Windows network, you cannot sit on your backside and hope it doesn’t happen to you. Their IT department have some serious explaining to do.
Dave H,
Yeh I agree. People need to look at their Windows network then decide to replace it with OS X.
Im Gonna hold out in the hope that the DHS and DoD are switching to Mac and thats just one reason why our new Powermacs are late.
It’s all over the UK news! PC’s shutting down randomly.
I was alarmed the other day when I went to the grocery store and noticed that the U-Scan-It self checkouts were powered by Windows 2000, but THIS scares the hell out of me!
“Makes me sick to see that organisations as essential as coastguards are using swiss cheese shite software. Glad I’m not a sailor. We can only pray that air traffic control use something else..” – 1281
You are right. Good thing nobody got hurt and the coastguards (not the IT) were professional enough to deal with it. When someone says nobody get killed from computer worms, here is a likely scenario that it can and may happen.
“Coastguards are still able to use telephones and radios but fax and telex machines have been put out of action”
I guess the Windows IT Manager hadn’t got around to installing Windows onto their telephone & radio system yet then.
What needs to happen is that the mainstream press needs to ad but 1 line of copy to every worm/virus/trojan article that they write “Macintosh and Linux computers were unaffected.” Instead of just stating the problem, they would then also be promoting a solution. I think then we would see a huge boom in sales.
And sorry to say it, MDN is not mainstream press
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Thank goodness the Coastguard officer’s are able to use charts (maps for you landlubbers) and not have to rely on computer aided navigation (as they all should be able to do!)…. potential refugees and illegal aliens take note!
And I can’t believe she used the term ‘maps’ in the press release, urgh!