[BC] Computer Issues and Viruses

[Jeffrey Kopp]

The Sasser worm would cause lsass.exe to crash, resulting in the shutdown. That was back in '04. SP2 for XP and SP3 for W2K took care of it. (Of course W2K should now be at SP4 plus the post-4 "rollup.")

That summer, this caused a remote broadcast (being Shoutcasted back to the studio) to go down. The W2K box they were using wasn't patched up to date; it had always previously been operated in-house (behind the station's firewall), so it hadn't been bit yet.

This remote was from a college campus, and as I walked thru the building on my way out after they were up and running, I noticed a computer lab full of students (probably on the same leg of the LAN we were using) and I thought "uh-oh," as I suspected the box they were using to feed the backhaul was not up to date, knew it had no software firewall or AV, and student labs are hothouses for virii and worms.

Anyway, we'd brought a phone bridge with us but the PD had obstinately refused to set it up even though the campus's IT had graciously arranged a dedicated phone line as backup. They called me back in from across town when the box began crashing. I quit volunteering for that service not long after that.