Houston, received quite a little scare Friday when they received a massive virus in their system. Specifically the court system. The virus impacted hundreds of its machines, and postponed many of the duties that certain parts of the courts must carry out.

The police force was ordered to suspend arresting people for minor offenses. The docket for the municipals court was completely dropped, and postponed. The virus then eventually made its way to the Houston Emergency Center. After the virus was contained, the city announced that 475 machines were hit before they could stop it.

The infection reached such levels, that they eventually had to call in Gray Hat Research, a virtual security company to help. The bill was $25,000 for services rendered. No culprit, the person who planted the virus, or the virus itself hasn’t been identified yet.

There have been some theories as to what attacked the Houston court’s computer system. The leading candidate is a virus referred to as, ‘Conficker’. The virus infects computers through a flaw found in Windows’ system. Once on a computer, Conficker nearly takes over everything on the system. It shuts down some of its capabilities, and then starts downloading malware. The virus has been known to spread very quickly, which is why so many computers were infected.

The weakness in Windows has been patched for awhile, so if you update your computer frequently you need no worry. The problem is that on larger systems, updating can be a hassle. There’s compatibility issues, and have to update software and hardware. Judging by the events that just occurred, it seems like going through that little hassle is better than having your system completely shutdown.

[via: Chron.com]

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!