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Technology staff members at Warsaw Community Schools are scrambling to rid the school corporation's Web server of an especially virulent computer virus.
"Of course there are always viruses and worms going around all the time, and we're hit by different ones a couple times a month," Dennis Van Duyne, technology director for Warsaw Community Schools, said Thursday. "But the protections we have in place usually confine the damage to a small area."
This virus, the "W32/Nimda.a-mm," is different, Van Duyne said, and none of the usual anti-virus programs has a "patch" or software in place to get rid of the virus.
Nimda infected the WCS Web server and then got onto other computers through the server. Van Duyne said it infected only the computers that use Windows, which is approximately two-thirds of the corporation's 2,500 computers. The Apple Macintosh computers, which make up the other one-third, were not affected.
"The problem is it keeps replicating," Van Duyne said. WCS' Web server at one point had 7,000 copies of the virus.
"We were able to clean it off the Web server in a couple of hours, but it also alters every Web page, and we have thousands of Web pages," he said.
The virus puts a code on each Web page so that if anyone downloads the coded Web page, their computer is then infected with the virus.
Van Duyne said the virus was discovered Tuesday and the Web server was shut down. By noon Wednesday the virus was gone, but "we're still cleaning pages and trying to get code out of the pages," he said.
He hopes to have the Web server up and running again today.
Van Duyne also emphasized that the virus does not affect any testing being done by computers and it does not affect classroom research. It has, however, affected the ability for schools and classrooms to communicate through the Web.
The difference between Nimda and previous viruses is that "it's far more contagious than any that we've experienced before," he said. Once on the server, the virus takes on a life of its own: "It's out there scanning, looking for machines to infect."
Some previous viruses were spread through e-mail; to keep from getting the virus, you didn't open suspicious e-mail.
With Nimda, however, it's not necessary to open e-mail to get the virus, Van Duyne said.
"Its purpose is to spread and slow the network down," he said.
An invasive side of the virus is that it creates a guest account on the host computer, he said, and gives that account administrative rights. When that computer logs on to the Internet, that guest account gives anyone who wants it access to everything on the user's computer.
The virus spreads through popular e-mail programs like Outlook Express, he said, and then e-mails itself to everyone in the user's address book.
Van Duyne said he expects more viruses like this one in the future.
"Every time we see one some hacker takes it and tweaks it and sends it back out," he said. "In this case there really was nothing we could do, so we just have to fix it and go on."
Anti-virus packages are developing programs to combat the virus, and KCOnline also has information about viruses, including Nimda, on its home page.
