Virus affects thousands of computers in Hanoi
HANOI - Tens of thousands of computers in Vietnam have been
attacked by a fast-spreading computer virus that targets
Microsoft's Windows operating systems, a government official
said Thursday.
Nguyen Tu Quang, director of the IT security department in the
Ministry of Post and Telecommunications, said the virus had caused
havoc at government ministries and private companies since
Tuesday.
"Many companies had to suspend their activities because they were
contaminated with the virus," he said. "This contamination spread
very quickly."
The virus attack, which has affected computer users around the
world since Tuesday, is the worst of its kind this year. The worm is
relatively unique because it does not rely on e-mails to infect
computers, instead entering through a regular Internet
connection.
Quang said computer owners were still being affected Thursday,
but the reported number of cases had declined by around 25 per
cent from a day earlier.
"This contamination (Thursday) has especially affected the state
administration sector," he said.
Quang said his department had translated into Vietnamese and
published on its website guidelines on how to destroy and prevent
infection by the virus, called Blaster but also uses the names
Lovsan and MSBLAST.
"I think its spread will decrease over the coming days and I think
the situation will be considerably better by the end of the week,"
he said. The virus exploits a software bug in most of Microsoft's
Windows systems, with Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows NT and
Windows Server 2003 the most vulnerable.
Agence France Presse - August 15, 2003.
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