Since the beginning of the fall semester, 12 computer viruses have struck the LSU network, costing more than $100,000 in lost time and production.
Twelve is twice the amount of viruses the University normally sees in a year.
Ron Hay, executive director of LSU Computing Services, said his office expects only six viruses a year.
“It’s wearing us out,” Hay said. “We get through one virus, and then another’s on us.”
W32.swen.A@MM is the new problem on campus. The virus was first reported Sept. 18, and Computing Services is working to decontaminate infected computers on campus, Hay said.
Janet Shih, who works with the Office of Computing Services, has been in charge of pushing back viruses such as W32 this year.
Shih said the W32 virus and its different variants infected the LSU network last week, and Computing Services waited for Symantec, creators of the Norton Antivirus software, to release new virus definitions so the virus could be caught in incoming e-mails.
“There was a period of vulnerability,” Shih said. “For a period of about 10 hours we had to try and fill the gap ourselves.”
That gap is the what happens on the inside of the network. Virus definitions, provided by Symantec, only sort through e-mail sent through the network, and according to Shih, e-mail is not the only way to spread a computer virus.
“It originally comes as an .EXE attachment through e-mail,” Shih said. “But if two computers share a disk or files, it could transfer.”
Hay said LSU’s increase of virus traffic may be because of more virus creators wreaking havoc for the “fun” of it.
“I don’t know why they do it,” Hay said. “It’s a lot of work, and most of them are so far away that it’s hard for them to even see the damage.”
Nationally, the FBI has been hunting the creators of the viruses.
In Minnesota last month, federal agents arrested Jeffrey Lee Parson, 18, for allegedly creating a variant of the “Blaster” worm that caused an electronic traffic jam of LSU’s registration services the first week of school.
The FBI said Parson admitted to modifying the original “Blaster” worm and creating a version called “Blaster.B.”
At least 7,000 computers were infected around the nation. But LSU is not the only University having problems with numerous virus attacks.
The University of Oklahoma had more than 2,300 computers infected with the SoBig.F and Blaster worms, according to the Oklahoma Daily, the campus newspaper.
Hay said he had spoken with technology directors at the University of New Orleans and Boston College, and they were having more problems with viruses than LSU.
“They are taking a beating,” Hay said. “We take the hits, but at least we keep on ticking.”