Virus exposes computer system in need of major upgrade
Podcast Episode
The havoc caused by a computer virus may prompt major upgrades for the Janesville School District's computer system. Kyle Geissler reports.
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Janesville School District network administrator Timothy Roberts, left, and interim IT manager Steve Schlomann talk about the school district's computer network at the Janesville Schools Education Services Center. Work is being done on the district's computers in the wake of a virus attack earlier this fall.
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Janesville School District help desk Lauri Decker answers help requests at the Janesville Schools Education Services Center. Work is being done on the district's computers in the wake of a virus attack earlier this fall.
JANESVILLE — A recent computer-virus attack revealed a Janesville School District computer system weakened by years of insufficient investment.
District Business Director Doug Bunton admitted budget constraints led to a "minimalist" approach to maintaining the computer network, which supports about 4,300 desktop workstations district wide.
On Friday, the head of the school district information technology department told The Janesville Gazette he chose to resign rather than be fired in the wake of the chaos caused by the virus.
The virus attacked Sept. 19 and wasn't completely eradicated until recently, officials said. Scattered problems remain around the district.
The district actually was working to upgrade the system leading up to this school year, but that work had to be set aside as IT staff members, consultants and temporary workers fought the virus.
The district's computer network was designed in 1995. Voters in 1997 approved a referendum that included $9.7 million to build a system that wired every building for the Internet and put at least one computer in every classroom.
The uses for computers in classrooms grew explosively over the years, Bunton said.
The system got periodic upgrades, but more could have been done, Bunton acknowledged in an interview last week.
Insufficient funds
Holding the district back were tight budgets, and Bunton blamed the state's revenue cap system. Revenue caps are part of a tax-relief effort that holds down yearly spending increases for public schools.
School officials have long complained that revenue caps have not allowed their spending to keep up with their expenses.
Handicapped computer-maintenance budgets combined with escalating use by staff have led to a computer network that needs an overhaul, Bunton said.
"If we under-funded it, then shame on us," said Lori Stottler, a school board member who has criticized the administration for not fully answering her questions about the virus attack.
Stottler said students are told regularly that they will be competing in a globally connected workforce of the future, but: "Our technology isn't up to par to show them what it might look like. It's a double standard. It doesn't work. For me it's like teaching with out-of-date textbooks."
Early warnings
The district had clues that its system might be vulnerable.
A Craig High School student hacked into the system two years ago, causing outages at the school. And last January, the system suffered an external attack from something called a "data packet."
And a 2005 consultant's report stated that the district lacked sufficient information-technology staffing. Staff was not increased, but the district did undertake other improvements the consultant recommended.
Bunton would not discuss the job performance of anyone in his IT department, on the advice of district legal counsel who sat in on a Gazette interview with Bunton.
But Bunton on Wednesday expressed confidence in the skills of his IT manager, Brandon Keirns.
Keirns said he resigned Thursday rather than be fired. He said he plans to ask the school board to refuse his resignation and place him on administrative leave while the reasons for his possible termination are investigated.
Bunton rejected the notion that the current IT staff is insufficiently trained.
"Could we do more? Sure. But is that the problem behind this? No," Bunton said. "There's no way you could draw that direct correlation between the virus getting in and not having provided sufficient staff development. …
"I really think we do have a lot of good people really trying hard, and to cast a shadow over their skills and abilities in this environment just really isn't fair to them," Bunton added.
Stottler remains critical: "We are under-funded and I get that. And we are understaffed, and I get that," but she said it's unacceptable that teachers and staff had to endure virus-related outages for nearly two months.
Repair costs
Bunton said the district will have spent about $50,000 to get rid of the virus and repair its system. Some of that cost includes upgrades that would have been done in any case, however.
Bunton said the virus attack put the district on notice that the system needs shoring up.
"It has brought it to a head and points to the need to really reevaluate it," Bunton said.
Bunton plans for a consultant to complete an audit of the district's computer needs, which will lead to spending recommendations in the 2009-10 budget.
Bunton couldn't say how much it will cost to upgrade the computer system.
"Today it would be hard to speculate because we don't know what the audit will turn up," he said. "I'm sure there will be additional expenditures needing to be made to staffing, equipment and software. I'm not sure, yet, how much.
"It's a very high priority for me, for the district."
Education deficit
Stottler said an outage of this length would be unthinkable in a business or hospital. She wondered how much educational value was lost because computers were down.
Bunton said it would be impossible to measure the loss, but he credited teachers for adapting to the loss of one of their prime tools for storing records and lesson plans.
Stottler said she has not been satisfied with answers she has gotten. She has called for a closed-door meeting to discuss personnel issues related to the computer system.
Board President DuWayne Severson, who is in charge of setting meetings and agendas, said he would work with Stottler to set up a meeting.
"I really just want to hear from administration who's accountable for this, how did we get here, and what are you going to do about it," Stottler said.
Security measures
The IT staff was working to upgrade the system when the virus hit. A better antiviral program was scheduled to be installed last summer, but other needs took priority, Keirns said.
"Some of those projects just ended up taking more time and resources than anticipated. So we just pretty much ran out of time," Keirns said.
One project that did get done was to activate the Microsoft security updates on all desktops. Before this summer, those automatic updates were turned off. Bunton could not say for certain whether they were ever turned on.
The reason for not having updates activated was because the staff and the computer network could not handle them, Bunton said.
Automatic security updates on a home computer are normally no problem, Bunton said. But in a network that uses such a wide variety of software, an update could conflict with another program, causing problems.
So the updates must be tested before they are allowed onto the desktops, Bunton said.
Until recently, the district had to go to each of the thousands of computer stations to allow the updates, something that was virtually impossible, Bunton said.
Now, the district has new management software, called Kaysea, which automatically checks the updates and installs them at the workstations automatically.
Cost for using Kaysea is about $216,000 a year.
Saving data
Bunton said the district must improve the way it backs up data, so that information is saved in the event of a viral attack or other disaster.
Officials believe at least 99 percent of the district's data survived this fall's virus attack, but that's no guarantee of future success.
Administrators' files at Marshall Middle School were lost last summer when software failed, Keirns said. No student records were lost.
The current system can barely keep up with district needs, Keirns said. A key question is how powerful a backup system should be purchased.
The system audit will include recommendations on what to do about backing up data, Bunton said.
Bunton seems determined to make improvements. He even brought in a consultant to critique how the district is handling the repairs in the wake of the virus attack.
"We are there. We are ready. We need to reevaluate what we have and where we are going with it," Bunton said.
"It's time, and we need to be doing that for the students."
COMPUTER STAFF
A rundown of the Janesville School District's information-technology staff:
-- One IT manager (he said he resigned Thursday).
-- One network engineer (position never filled).
-- Two network administrators.
-- Three technicians.
-- One help-desk person
-- Two software-support specialists.
Nov 19, 2008 at 1:53 p.m.
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Tjncj- Thanks I did not know the origin but I use it all the time
Credit where credit is due, Thank you Abe
Nov 18, 2008 at 3:17 p.m.
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One more thing - janesvillecomments earlier went through and showed that they have themselves well protected.
In light of that, I just stumbled upon this offer by ZoneAlarm that until 6AM on the 19th, they are giving away the Pro version of their software in celebration of them being around for 10 years.
I am in no way affiliated with them but know that if you're like me and given the state of our economy, free is free and ZoneAlarm is reputable enough to where they aren't going to bombard you with garbage.
I don't know what the appropriate rules are for posting links so, if you are interested, contact me and I'll send it to you unless someone knows otherwise.
Good Day!
Nov 18, 2008 at 9:39 a.m.
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Technoguy- Lest someone thinks you came up with that phrase yourself:
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"It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt." Abraham Lincoln
Nov 18, 2008 at 9:17 a.m.
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JanesvilleComments
Good for you!!! Great job. But I think you may be in the minority of general computer users because you are up to date and fully protected.
If everyone were as up to date as you are there would be FAR fewer virus or trojan attacks on the internet.
Nothing wrong with a fully patched and protected XP box. I have been on Vista since RC2 and I personally love it. It runs everything I can throw at it just fine and I run a fairly large assortment of software.
Nov 18, 2008 at 8:51 a.m.
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Greaselightning
BRAVO!!! That is my point, the school system should act as a team and take the good as well as the bad TOGETHER instead of looking to blame one team member or group for all of this. Mistakes are a fact of life and we all make them everyday. Mistakes in the world of computer networks are also a fact of life they just affect alot more people when made.
The networking team was in the middle of systemwide upgrades when this happened and they had slated a antivirus upgrade. They were aware they had issues but due to lack of manpower they had not gotten to that part of the system upgrades yet.
JvlDuDe
It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt. If your statement were true then there would not be a great shortage of QUALIFIED Network Admins and they surly would not command the salary ranges they get for their work.
Nov 18, 2008 at 7:06 a.m.
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technoguy and RichE95 have some very valid points as does everyone here. What amazes me with this whole mess is that there seems to be a lack of 'taking responsibility.' There is a lot of finger pointing in my opinion (just my opinion) in the articles I have read, of which I'm sure I have missed some.
I have been in the IT field for a LONG time working in the retail market as well as both educational and financial institutions. From the standpoint of both IT as well as Business Administration, everyone is responsible. The district's board and administration had to have known there were budget and staffing problems and so did Keirns and his staff. There is no excuse for an outbreak of this magnitude. Yes, we can define what is what and say how rampant viruses and the like can be, but the point is that the integrity of a network like this cannot be overlooked. Security should be one of the top priorities and that does not appear to have been the case.
The fact that the manager is resigning but wants the board to interject is absurd. Either you get on the horse, fix the problem, learn from the mistakes and move forward or you resign. If you get fired, it's part of life, besides at this point, regardless of if one quits or gets fired, any employer in the area is probably going to put two and two together. Furthermore, most any interviewer will ask why you left your last job.
To think that removing this technology from the classrooms would solve the problem would only create more. The largest problem being that our children would have a lack of knowledge and tools at their disposal and would only lead to more issue when they move on to college or technical school. If this was at the cause of a student or a few students - it is unfair to think that punishing the rest of them or those to come is a good solution, we would only be depriving them. I too pay taxes in Janesville and of course I would want them to be lower, but it's not going to happen and I accept that. I have no problem giving money via taxes to the school district. However, all of these folks need to step up to the plate and as a whole admit there was a HUGE oversight and that they are working as a TEAM to resolve these issues. I'm not there, I don't know the entire story and none of us do, but it is the administration's responsibility to the city and taxpayers, more importantly the students, to get it together, after all, what kind of example has now been set?
Not to mention, who in their right mind as an IT Professional would want to dive into this mess to replace this guy?
Nov 18, 2008 at 12:24 a.m.
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sorry wrong place...LOL
Nov 18, 2008 at 12:23 a.m.
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Where is Ted Nugent when you need him?
Nov 17, 2008 at 7:38 p.m.
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Here is a question you must ask yourself right now.
Are YOUR virus signatures up to date?
Yes - AVG http://www.avg.com
Is your virus scanner engine up to date?
Yes - AVG
Does YOUR computer have all the latest security patches and service packs installed?
Yes - Service Pack 3
Also running Zone Alarm as a secondary firewall and have a router between my PC and cable modem. http://www.zonealarm.com
Are you running old outdated operating systems?
I'm running Windows XP - but I'm using the Mozilla browser (I shot the sheriff, but I did not shoot the deputy). XP is current enough to meet all my computing needs, requires the shallowest learning curve to maintain, and I'm only risking my own data.
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The newest is not always the best ("How can you tell a Pioneer? He's the guy laying face down with arrows in his back.")
Nov 17, 2008 at 6:45 p.m.
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NVgrf--just exactly where IS LAUGH-LIN, Nevada?
Nov 17, 2008 at 6:39 p.m.
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C'mon my man badgerlvr....give me a hint as to who you are. And as for my U Drive.....It's not bad for an old frt! By the way, it's 82 degrees out here...how are things in Janesburg?
Nov 17, 2008 at 6:16 p.m.
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It doesn't take a ton of brains to maintain network. I've been doing admin work for years. I could run this network so well I think I might put in my resume.
Nov 17, 2008 at 5:01 p.m.
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How would you eval each and every member of the IT staff to determine if they are working up to par?
Job shadowing for a year or two?
We could do like the has been done to the teaching profession and establish a standard test of the environment and then we could just work to pass the test. Then when you come in with some off the wall problem I can say sorry we are testing next quarter and I don't have time to fix your issue I have to pass the test.
Sometimes it's hard to draw the line between your expectations from IT and what their real job is. Then every time you do not get your own way the IT people are all idoits and don't know what they are doing. If your network ran for 10 years that was not an accident it was skill, determination and hard work by the IT staff.
Nov 17, 2008 at 3:57 p.m.
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Once again Bunton deflects: "Could we do more? Sure. But is that the problem behind this? No," Bunton said. "There's no way you could draw that direct correlation between the virus getting in and not having provided sufficient staff development. …
Yes, but could lack of staff development and qualified people have been part of what took so long for the fix? Could what made us venerable to this also be attributed to them and the prior management? Doug will continue to skirt the issue.
I suggest that someone evaluate the performance of every person in the IT dept. Are they performing at the level their job requires? From the experience I have had with many dept. members sent to address my computer problems, I think that many (particularly those show in inset photography) are not.
Can someone actually figure out if Bunton is and ever has been qualified to oversee the IT dept?
Nov 17, 2008 at 3:16 p.m.
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I agree I look at things from the tech point of view. That is my life I admit. However that is the point, the compromises that are forced upon business managers are still not an excuse for understaffing as stated in the 2005 study paid for by the school board and never acted upon, that was money well spent. Or the consultants that are now overseeing the reconstruction effort at hundreds of dollars per hour or the Engineer position that was created and never filled. Here is a question you must ask yourself right now.
Are YOUR virus signatures up to date?
Is your virus scanner engine up to date?
Does YOUR computer have all the latest security patches and service packs installed?
Are you running old outdated operating systems?
If your answer to any of these is no or I don't know
THEN YOU ARE PART OF THE PROBLEM!
Read up on BOTnets and see why.
Do you know your computer is not trying to infect every server on the internet whenever you turn it on?
The defense of a computer network is a 24X7 job that never ends and only gets harder with each day. Next time your computer professional tells you no that you cannot have permissions to load that shareware or connect to the music sharing sight think about the fact she/he is doing what is best for the good of the whole network and has most likley told dozens of others the same thing to protect your data.
Nov 17, 2008 at 2:26 p.m.
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This is a problem with ALL companies, businesses, and schools that use computers. When it comes to budgets, the computer portion is extremely small or nothing. There is never any money to allocate to computers, because the people in charge of making the budget just don't think about that. Usually they are tech savy and could care less.
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But when there is a problem, everybody asks why did it happen? Because nobody wanted to spend $500 to prevent a problem, and now we have to spend thousands to fix it.
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So for those of that are bashing the people that are in charge of the computer system, they are probably doing the best with what tiny budget the school district allows. Do not berate them. Does anyone know what the computer budget is for the school district? Chances are it is no where near what it should be.
Nov 17, 2008 at 12:41 p.m.
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Don't worry!!!!!
The School Board will soon be addressing this situation with a multi million dollar referendum!!!!!!
Nov 17, 2008 at 12:14 p.m.
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technoguy makes some good points from a technological viewpoint. He misses stuff on the business side. For example - per a Janesville Gazette article a couple of months back I learned that the Janesville School System has twice as many employees as 15 or so years ago. At the same time enrollment is the same or less. Where are those employees and why were they hired? It may be time for some transparency. Taxpayers can't be blamed for resenting ever rising taxes. As taxpayers, we can be blamed for not demanding accountability from those who work for us or should be representing us.
Nov 17, 2008 at 11:30 a.m.
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Todays world demands our students to be educated in the use of TODAYS tools that is computers and all the associated expenses that go along with it.
This problem is the result of years of neglect and requirements being overridden by other things deemed more important in the budget, staffing and planning process.
When your staffing is so lean you have all you can do to keep up with the basic operations and day to day troubleshooting it is very hard to plan or execute systemwide events like upgrades or even evaluate your system needs.
There is plenty of ownership of this situation to go around and it starts with the systems management people and goes all the way to the tax payers who do not want their tax bills to go up. It includes the teachers who want pay raises and the administrators inside the school system who want to keep their budgets as low as possible in order to be considered sussessful in their positions.
Everyone needs to back down from this outrage position and let professionals do their work and get this system back together and operational again.
Take a breath and realize this is a very complex situation and there are NO easy answers just let it play out.
Nov 17, 2008 at 11:24 a.m.
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Mr Bunton always has his government speak down pat. Any problem is always the result of not having enough tax payer money. Never mind what else we spend money on. How about getting rid of the the school dictric's social worker for older parents?
Nov 17, 2008 at 11:02 a.m.
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I won't claim to know alot about computers, but my tax bill tells me that I pay out alot to the school district. Where the heck is all that money going????? I do not want to pay anymore! Someone get in there and straighten it out PLEASE!!!!! You know that they will try to suck some more out of the people of this city, I don't have anymore! Get rid of the computers and go back to books and pencils and paper! It seemed they worked ok for us.
Nov 17, 2008 at 10:44 a.m.
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Nvgf---you should keep your hands off of your U-drive. You never know what you might catch!
Nov 17, 2008 at 9:42 a.m.
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Zibel - I'm here to defend Tim Roberts. He WAS NOT the IT Administrator in question. He has been part of the team getting everything back up and going, and has done an exemplary job. He is much more qualified than what we finally got rid of (Brandon Keirns), and I know would do a much better job. So there!
Nov 16, 2008 at 10:44 p.m.
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"Hi, I;ll quit, but then I want you to say I can't quit and spend more time screwing around figuring out if you should fire me......."
What a freaking loser.
Nov 16, 2008 at 10:34 p.m.
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Even tonight, the virus is still active on Janesville School District's website. I hope they haven't paid their consultants yet.
Nov 16, 2008 at 9:15 p.m.
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i cannot believe how ridiculous this article is. the title should be changed to "JSD: time for damage control." there is nothing hard about network security, nor is it hard to maintain desktop pc's. this to me says there was a very serious lack of planning for problems. to see they seriously admitted that getting machines windows updates was a PROJECT!!!??!?! are you kidding me?!? that is such an elementary, foundation priority, that i cannot even understand how they paid these people (i would imagine) 60-70k/year or well beyond that. i would love to know what a week's work was like before the virus. as i've said before, there are some quality free apps out there for all this. money should not be an excuse.
Nov 16, 2008 at 7:45 p.m.
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Tim Roberts was the IT guy at Parker when I graduated (1999)
He seemed like a cool guy, but I guess that doesn't necessarily mean he knows what he is doing.
Nov 16, 2008 at 7:40 p.m.
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something called a data packet. how dumb is the gazette
Nov 16, 2008 at 6:51 p.m.
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Terminal Servers and Thin Clients were already researched by some of the smarter people in that IT department. They looked at replacing Teacher, Admin, and elementary/middle/high school desktops to save LOTS of money. The admin machines could have been replaced but the teacher apps could not run terminal and neither could the student apps in the elementary level because the Microsoft Terminal Services didn't support .wav or .midi files. Citrix was too costly.
At the Middle and High school level they run science and math software that requires direct I/O with a serial port that could not be done over terminal services.
The other drawback to terminal at the elementary level was the 10mb backbone. I realize terminals don't need much bandwidth but 200 terminals on a 10mb LAN or a 1.5mb WAN?!? And they thought it sucked now....
Lets just wait and see if the new new guy can get any better results out of that department. I haven't seen any full time janesville employees in a while its just all these rent-a-techs they keep sending out. Either the full time people are all too busy fixing stuff behind the scenes or not bright enough to come and install a printer.... I know which way Im guessing!
Nov 16, 2008 at 5:27 p.m.
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Badgerlvr........Let's see. Who do I know back in Janesburg who is a Badger lover? I am assuming that your moniker refers to the U.of Wisconsin and not the small animals. I have only met a couple of people who were truly a part of the UW pseudo-intellectual delusional system, and one of them is serving time at the moment. And as for technology, I was changing typewriter ribbons before any of the district tech people were born. Oh well, I'm off to polish my U Drive.
Nov 16, 2008 at 4:49 p.m.
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This seems to go against those who argued against me in previous articles stating that this system wasn't underfunded. I thought then that this couldn't simply be only one persons mistake.
I agree with those who mention a thin client solution. There is no reason every student needs full computing abilities. Moreover, if the servers operating systems were ghosted using thin clients, this could have easily been repaired. It would have been as easy as switching over to the second OS during the school day, while working on the problem OS during off hours. Granted, I'm no network expert, but these are fairly common practices these days.
Nov 16, 2008 at 4:16 p.m.
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Yeah, you guys should hire janesvillean.
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He knows everything.
Nov 16, 2008 at 4:16 p.m.
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Wow.
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Here's the money quote:
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"One project that did get done was to activate the Microsoft security updates on all desktops. Before this summer, those automatic updates were turned off. Bunton could not say for certain whether they were ever turned on.
"The reason for not having updates activated was because the staff and the computer network could not handle them, Bunton said."
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U-N-A-C-C-E-P-T-A-B-L-E-!!!-!!!-!!!
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A network admin who does not know what is going on within every single machine on his network should have been out of a job long ago.
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Another issue: earlier articles have stated that the virus was on district servers. If the district really has servers, why are the classroom machines anything more than thin clients? I highly doubt that even the physics or chemistry department are doing any serious number crunching.
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Updates, whether operating system, application, or virus patches should be pushed out to the clients. If there is not enough bandwidth to do even that (at night when no one is using the machines!), then the classroom machines should have been physically prevented from having access to even the intranet let alone the rest of the world. That should have been an easy enough job to do from a central location as well -- just prevent access for whatever subnet the classrooms are on... or if the network was so badly designed then just prevent the MAC addresses from getting outside the sandbox. This is networking 101 guys and gals.
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The district is surely at fault for part of this negligent and extremely unprofessional behavior due to the lack of funding over the past 13 years.
Nov 16, 2008 at 3:51 p.m.
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Think of data packets as being a bit like postal envelopes containing letters. Packets are the virtual container by which most digital systems communicate. In tech-speak, a packet's particular structure and format is defined by its communication protocol. For example, websites transfer data to and from your browser via hypertext transfer protocol, hence that "http://" prefix preceding the WWW address in your browser's location window.
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Like any other protocol, http describes how each data packet must be formatted in order to reach its intended destination in one piece. Similar to postal addresses, everything connected via the internet has a unique numerical address called an IP number. Among other things, the data packet specifies both the recipient's and sender's IP addresses, similar to the delivery and return addresses on a postal envelope.
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Simply put, the text you are now reading is analogous to a letter and the packet that once contained the data for this text is analogous to a postal envelope that once contained a letter.
Nov 16, 2008 at 3:51 p.m.
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Through correct network group policy and other free software to auto update all computers accross the network nightly this could have been avoided. I'm a Sr. Network Engineer and the "under funding" cry is crap. The whole staff should get fired.
Nov 16, 2008 at 3:48 p.m.
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NVgrf...you understand? Heck, you couldn't even figure out the typewriter much less the computer.
Nov 16, 2008 at 3:29 p.m.
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As for viruses, yes, they do travel by themselves most of the time.... Not really most of the time, unless the network is totaly unprotected. Then it's a hey day.. Do you really think that they school left themselves this open for attack.. You would almost have to have NO firewall and NO virus scanner whatsoever to be this open... Most likely someone was visiting somewhere they shouldnt be visiting. This seems to be a prety intense virus to have shut everything down for this long. This is no script-kiddie thing, this was a serious attack. You would hope that this was not innoculated by someone brining it, but you never know. Kids are brining in thier own jump drives, so it is a possibility.
Nov 16, 2008 at 12:33 p.m.
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The Gazette could use a word or two from their technology staff in this one. All information on a network (local, or the internet) travels via data packets. When I hit "post", my text and information about who is submitting it go to the Gazette computer in a data packet or two. Streaming video comes to your computer in a whole long chain of data packets. That said, there are means of attack based on very technical loopholes in the transmission system; the idea is to fool the receiving computer that the data packet it is receiving is legitimate.
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As for viruses, yes, they do travel by themselves most of the time. Perhaps someone did something unsafe like visiting an inappropriate website (yes, even from the school network, and chances are high it was a student, who may not have had any idea what his actions precipitated), and the virus was launched within a seemingly innocuous data file like an executable MP3 (music). Or someone brought an infected file in via disk (less likely these days). It really isn't possible to figure this out after the fact most of the time. What is necessary is that the security software on the network be designed and updated to protect the core network systems against attack, as well as prevent the spread from workstation to workstation, and that seems to have been the critical failure here. Additionally, mistakes were definitely made because computers were reinfected.
Nov 16, 2008 at 11:54 a.m.
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About.com defines a data packet as follows: "A packet is a basic unit of communication over a digital network. A packet is also called a datagram, a segment, a block, a cell or a frame, depending on the protocol. When data has to be transmitted, it is broken down into similar structures of data, which are reassembled to the original data chunk once they reach their destination."
Ahh....Now I understand! (It's hell to get old!)
Nov 16, 2008 at 10:45 a.m.
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Something called a "data packet" attacked the "computer". ;-)
Nov 16, 2008 at 9:07 a.m.
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Ahhhhh.....Remember the days of paper, pencils and encyclopedias? The only viruses we got were those resulting from contact with the kid in class whose nose continually ran. And when the pencils broke, the district never looked for a scapegoat.....we just resharpened them.
(Just kidding tech geeks....back off!)
Nov 16, 2008 at 7:06 a.m.
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Viruses don't create or install themselves, somewhere someone did something they should not have to get the virus on the system. We should just be happy that the private information that is held in the database was not released...
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