Campus recovers from computer viruses – but stay vigilant

The campus has almost completely recovered from last week’s outbreak of the SoBIG.F e-mail virus.

The virus, which spread across the United States last week, initially infected approximately 2,200 computers on campus by Aug. 20. By early this week, the number was down to just a handful.

However, experts at the Division of Information Technology (DoIT) say that campus users need to continue to be vigilant, because it’s likely that worms and viruses will multiply in the future. The Blaster and Nachi Worms are two new concerns, though they haven’t struck as severly as SoBIG.F, says DoIT’s Brian Rust.

Campus users are urged to:

• Download and run Norton anti-virus software, get a copy from departmental technical support staff or pick up a free CD-ROM with the software at the DoIT Tech Store, 1210 W. Dayton St. The store is open Monday- Friday, 7:45 a.m.-5:30 p.m.
• Regularly download security patches from Microsoft to protect Windows and Internet Explorer. Learn more at http://www.microsoft.com/security/protect/.
• Be wary of opening suspicious attachments.

More information on virus protection: http://www.doit.wisc.edu or 264-HELP.