Viral Infection
Many Oxford students have been inundated with bizarre emails in the last week, due to highly contagious viruses that have spread with alarming rapidity throughout the university's computer network. Their unsettling messages have included "Today is a good day to die" and "Charity is a hate."
Univ. student Alan Geering estimates that over 2,500 emails were sent from his Herald address without him knowing, to students and tutors he does not know, and to some government email addresses. Also over 500 files were created or infected by viruses on his computer. Abigail Bradfield (Exeter) had similar problems with many students throughout the university receiving emails that appeared to come from her account. In one day alone she received over 400 emails stating 'message delivery failed'.
Bradfield told the OxStu: "I get messages from people all over the place berating me for sending them a weird email, even though I've never actually sent them." She added, "This totally is not my fault and it's really awful." Apparent senders of these emails include Hotmail as well as Herald users, with some being sent from Brookes students' accounts. Keble students in particular were badly attacked by the mass emails.
The Oxford University Computing Services (OUCS) has taken several effective measures to reduce the risk of viral infection, and Deputy Director Alan Gay advises students not to open suspicious attachments and to update their anti-virus software immediately. The current worms can all can move across networks, infecting machines even when the emails are not opened.
Several college IT reps have also emailed virus warnings to their JCRs in the past week, endorsing this message. Teddy Hall's JCR IT Officer told the OxStu: "We've had a quite a bit of a bombardment with viruses in SEH over the last few days, although thankfully it seems most people are able to deal with the problem themselves."
22nd May 2003