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Saturday, August 20, 2005 Computer worm hits network at TechAnnoying bug caused machines to shut down and reboot repeatedly A pesky computer worm, described as more of an "annoyance" than a "catastrophe," has nearly been eradicated from the network at New Mexico Tech. Bob Tacker, director of Tech's Information Systems Department, said that as of Friday morning, the worm had been taken off most of the computers on campus and by the beginning of next week it should be completely gone. "It doesn't do a lot of damage," he said of the worm. "It certainly could have been much worse." The worm hit New Mexico Tech on Wednesday morning, at the same time it was disabling systems around the country. "It causes the computers to go and look for other computers to infect," which, Tacker said, overloads the network, "and it causes the computer to shut itself down and reboot on an endless cycle." Tacker said they did not know how the worm got onto their network and said it was something that they would probably never know. He said that the worm affected more than 300 computers on campus. It affected computers that run Microsoft Windows 2000 or older operating. Tacker said computers that had such programs as Windows XP were not affected. He said they applied security patches to the computers on Thursday, but they did not appear to work and had to be reapplied Friday. The director said the affects of the worm were only a minor setback to people on campus and compared it to losing half of a day because of a power outage. According to Microsoft Corp.'s Web site, there are several different variations of the worm. It reportedly affected congressional systems and those at several media outlets, including CNN and NBC. No major problems were reported on any systems it affected, other than the "annoyance" factor Tacker mentioned.
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