Lake Washington schools dealing with nasty computer virus
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REDMOND, Wash. -- The Lake Washington School District is dealing with a bad virus, but it's not the kind that any cold medicine will fix.
It's a computer virus that's spread to every one of the district's 50 schools.
"It is a really a little nasty virus that likes networks," said district spokeswoman Kathryn Reith.
It's known as the Goblin Virus that passes malware from computer to computer, just as a kid passes a cold around a school.
"We are working very hard on containment and once you have that containment then you have a shot at taking care of things," Reith said.
And there in lies the problem. This is the first year the district issued laptops to every high school and middle schooler to use at school, on field trips and take home. Throw in computers at the district office and elementary schools, that's a network of 25,000 computers.
Add bad web surfing habits, infected and infecting home networks -- it's a virus issue the district has never faced before and it's disrupted classes.
"We have loaners in some cases when a lot of computers are offline and teachers may be delaying what they are doing," Reith said.
Some 2,500 computers have been removed from service, staff has been added to quarantine the infection, and the district says antivirus software and firewalls were installed on every computer.
After a month of fighting the virus, they say the rate of infection has slowed to a trickle.
"We are going to figure out what happened here to beef up what we already have in the way of all those kinds of protections against the viruses," Reith said.
It's been tough lesson in computer management for staff, teachers, parents, not just students.
It's a computer virus that's spread to every one of the district's 50 schools.
"It is a really a little nasty virus that likes networks," said district spokeswoman Kathryn Reith.
It's known as the Goblin Virus that passes malware from computer to computer, just as a kid passes a cold around a school.
"We are working very hard on containment and once you have that containment then you have a shot at taking care of things," Reith said.
And there in lies the problem. This is the first year the district issued laptops to every high school and middle schooler to use at school, on field trips and take home. Throw in computers at the district office and elementary schools, that's a network of 25,000 computers.
Add bad web surfing habits, infected and infecting home networks -- it's a virus issue the district has never faced before and it's disrupted classes.
"We have loaners in some cases when a lot of computers are offline and teachers may be delaying what they are doing," Reith said.
Some 2,500 computers have been removed from service, staff has been added to quarantine the infection, and the district says antivirus software and firewalls were installed on every computer.
After a month of fighting the virus, they say the rate of infection has slowed to a trickle.
"We are going to figure out what happened here to beef up what we already have in the way of all those kinds of protections against the viruses," Reith said.
It's been tough lesson in computer management for staff, teachers, parents, not just students.
Im not an Apple fanboy by any means. Yes I love my Mac but anyway..... Apple Ipod is worth more than all of Microsoft. Hows that for "Doing it right"
The Goblin virus and its many spinoffs are an old (2000) issue and easily detected/protected from with almost every good corporate sized anti-virus program. This tells me that whom ever is supporitng the antivirus area, is not doing the design, update and mandatory maintenace of the job. I get calls from individuals everyday with that junk kaspersky that has expired or caused many other issues. If they are running this or any of those free antivirus on a network of that size, then they deserve what they got.
Did the PC's even have anti virus software?
OK pro-Mac people, I get it but Macs cost a small fortune compared to Windows machines, sorry but we all know that's just a fact. Schools have budgets that need to be met. What they spend on antivirus + the machines is probably STILL way less than the cost of purchasing all those Mac notebook and desktop machines.
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I have also never worked at a company that had more than a Mac or two in the graphics department - I think learning Windows is a lot more practical for the workplace, at least for the time being.
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My first machine was an Apple IIe and my current  PC in Win7 so I'm not biased one way or the other.
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I don't know man after reading this article and thinking about the downtime, overtime and lost productivity its possible the 'expensive' up front costs of the mac just might have saved them some money in the end!
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2,500 machines out of commission and IT fighting this thing for a month straight. lol. Yeah they saved a bundle buying the cheapest PC laptop they could find.
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The ordeal these guys just endured sounds a hell of a lot more expensive than any model of mac that is available.
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 @WAbornnraised and so the time and money spent to fight off this virus was cheaper then a Mac in what way?
@WAbornnraised - If apples were as common as Windows PC's, they would be infected just as frequently and easily.  It's a simple economics question: If you're going to write a virus, Are you going to go after a small base of devices, or go after the vast majority of devices out there?Â
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It's got nothing to do with which is better. It certainly hasn't got anything to do with one being more secure than the other. It's simply - what can I do to attack the greatest number of devices with one 'program'?  Â
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And this is what happens when you give a bunch of kids widows based machines. You can all argue thats its user error and bla bla bla... Provide Macs and this would not be an issue... that is a fact and you can't argue that. I surely don't miss antivirus.
 @Mike206 I agree that Mac's are least likely to get infected than PC's. But I still think a good amount of the reasoning. is Mostly to do with the consumer base percentage. When you have 70+% on windows and only 14% on mac. your virus creators are looking for the largest number it can get to spread infection. sense Mac has only 14% you have way less user base than then 70+%. then out of the 70% you have people who don't keep up with updates and protection. So I do agree that providing Mac's might help. But honestly your only going to just pass the problem to another vendor if you just use a diffrent product. I for one glad that the mac has under 20%. Because I like using my Mac at home. And I don't want to deal with the issue's I deal with at work at home as much. But after seeing this new Windows 8 I think Mac will get about 4% user base. And apple will keep it if they just keep the hardware cost down. But honestly if we want like tools our kids will use when they get into a job in the real world. It would be smarter to give them a PC. more company's have PC's than mac's. but its good to keep our kids familar with both enviroment just incase.
@Mike206 - gee, you don't live in reality if you think that Macs are virus free. they aren't any more secure than Windows PC's. The reason they aren't attacked as often is because the return on the effort is so small (in other words, too few devices for most hackers to waste thier time on).
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Did you notice that whenever Macs were becoming more popular, more viruses sprung up for them? Because someone thought it was worth thier time to find holes in the OS and attack them.
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 @FormerMarineSgt   Yes that is obviously why there are WAY less viruses. I understand that for big buisnes it makes a lot more sense to have windows based machines. But when you are talking about a bunch of school kids that are not gonna ALL be responsible when surfing it just makes more sense to provide machines that are less prone to viruses. I work in seattle radio so for me Mac is a must when editing audio. Im not trying to bash on PC.Â
 @FormerMarineSgt  @Mike206 There are more things to consider than just a computer virus as well. There is Spyware, Adware, and other performance sucking malware that aren't technically considered a computer virus. These are just as prevalent on Macintosh as on Windows, and are usually part of installed software packages that are used to track and guide commercial advertising to the computer user.
 @Mike206 http://securitywatch.pcmag.com/none/295168-the-ten-most-dangerous-mac-viruses
 @DarkParty  @Mike206 i dunno=you have few or no viruses with Mac-there are lots of "Proof of concept" virus that never make it out of the script kiddies house, but they never make it into the wild .  I once went to a security website. The months list of Windows warnings/viruses was 12 pages long. The Mac? 3 those that think Macs are not a LOT safer than Windows and IE need to have their heads examined.
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"Windows is an antiquated technology"-WSJ Sept 2009 in a review of Mac OS X
Kent SD issues laptops to students as well. Do they have a problem like this?
Stop giving out laptops with Windows installed and 99% of the virus issues are gone. Simple solution really.
 @MarkMan A classic but very moot argument. Windows has a 90% market share, Macintosh maybe 7%, Linux even less. Why train our students on computer systems very few of them will ever be able to afford or use for future employment. Macintosh is a very nice, personal computing system BUT very few corporations and businesses use them.
@RTNavy @MarkMan Your number are too old. Check the numbers again. when MS released Vista Mac got a huge jump. up to 16%Â then those numbers came down a bit after win 7 and hardware age. looking at about 12.5% currently. I expect it will go back to 16 or 18% sometime duing this year. with windows 8 is such a flop.
@MarkMan How about restricting websites and priveleges for issued laptops. Viruses DO NOT come from legitmate websites and people.
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Let me guess - you are some technocrat advocating nothing but alternative or free source operating systems.
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Give it a break already, those arguments are long played out. You bring nothing to the table.
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Stop blaming Microsoft for every virus out there. How about blame poor user habits and individuals who create the viruses?
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 @commonHuskyfan  @MarkMan The only reason Linux doesn't have the virus proliferation that Windows does is that NOBODY uses it except for servers. And even then in a corporate domain environment, Windows Server 2003/2008 is the dominant player. If anybody thought Linux was a viable alternative and actually got some market share, you would see viruses for Linux in short order.
Most schools pay a fortune for their technology from grant monies, but after they have spent the money on hardware and software, they have forgotten the technical support issues. It doesn't matter what "brand" or type of "operating system" the computers employ, they still take people who know how maintain the actual computers AND the complex networks necessary to connect them all.
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You can't just buy a wi-fi antenna from Best Buy or a Wal Mart and run 25,000 computers from it. You need routers, switches, servers, filters, firewalls, management tools AND qualified technicians. Technicians who in private enterprise get paid nearly as much as Teachers in a school district, and in public schools rarely get paid what a Classroom Aide is paid.
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 @RTNavy EXACT same thing I was just telling my work buddies. teachers have been on these networks for YEARS and I haven't heard of any problems. why add the students to the same network as the staff? why not separate it? and to go a step further, separate each schools network from the rest. they don't need to be on the same network as a different school, they SHOULDN'T be! obviously someone didn't think about this in depth AT ALL!
 @DylanJ It only costs more money to build separate networks and connections.
 @RTNavy I looked at a job with a couple different school districts in IT. I laughed when I saw what they were willing to pay based on the requirements.
 @dg54321  @RTNavy "I laughed when I saw what they were willing to pay"
And yet many people think that public employees get paid too much...
 @OrcasThunder  @RTNavy Many of them do. They just aren't working as IT techs. They're the ones going to the public functions and wearing fancy suits.
I'm sure it had nothing to do with all the "Pron" sites the little buggers like to cruise at night.
 @NaviDog I'm an IT professional and honestly the worse places people are getting malware from are fantasy sports sites.  Its actually pretty hilarious.
 @NaviDog You can get them just from clicking on bad or malformed advertising ads on sites as popular as Google, EBay, Facebook and KOMONews.com. Google themselves report they fight and clean up nearly 50,000 infected advertisements per month, and those are just the one's they find before you do.
 @RTNavy  @NaviDog You're exactly right. people click on advertisements or spoof links everywhere.
Anyone in the know will tell you that viruses on porn sites is RARE. You can get them easily downloading music, videos, and even free software programs.
 @Alikelystorey I wouldn't call it "rare" on porn sites. Many of the infections I've seen at different places I've worked were from porn sites....mostly from the ads on those sites. And it's more spyware than viruses these days. Or the two work together. Nasty stuff once you actually get infected.
 @Alikelystorey You can get infected from anywhere though if you don't have proper security on your machines. And make sure you keep the users from having admin rights. Every place I've had virus problems gave their users admin rights and had no group policy restrictions to speak of.