The virus that has been plaguing campus and district computers for several weeks has finally been contained, but not before costing the campus untold amounts of money in manpower hours.
The Rbot family virus that infected computer systems at Bakersfield College and the Kern Community College District is finally thought to be contained, said Jim McGee, director of Information Services at BC. A virus opened a backdoor in the network that allowed other programs to generate tons of popup windows and messages that drastically slowed down the computer system.
“Probably the most insidious thing about the virus is that it morphed from one machine to another. It didn’t retain the same signature, which made it difficult to identify,” said McGee, in response to why it took so long to contain the virus.
“None of the computer labs were infected, only the faculty and staff desktops,” said McGee.
He said students don’t have to worry about using the computers found in labs on campus and shouldn’t be concerned about infecting their own computers with floppy disks that were used in the lab computers.
While the virus has not done any physical damage to the BC computer system, it has caused a substantial loss in manpower hours for the limited BC Information Services staff.
“This virus brought us to our knees, and we have about a month’s worth of backlog at our help desk right now,” McGee said.
With the virus contained, the IS staff is busy at work cleaning up the damage left behind.
“It’s kind of like having your dog in your house and you go home and the dog has torn up the inside of the house. So you lock him in a closet. You’ve contained the dog but you still have the mess to contend with,” McGee said.
The district has created a task force with several members, including two representatives from BC. The Problem Resolution Team is evaluating the district’s network status, investigating its current level of protection.
The team is attempting to devise a plan to prevent future virus infections from occurring, and if it does happen again, to determine what can be done to limit the damage.
It is still unknown how the BC campus and district computer systems got infected.
“We don’t know how we got infected, and we probably never will,” McGee said.