Suspected virus shuts down Houston municipal courts
Multiple media outlets are reporting the news that a suspected computer virus has led the city to shut down the entire municipal courts computer system (and has led HPD to suspend arrests for outstanding traffic warrants).
Here is an excerpt from Lee McGuire's reporting for KHOU-11, which has been the most detailed so far:
Problems with city government computers first cropped up Wednesday morning at the Municipal Court building at 1400 Lubbock. Gwendolyn Goins, a spokesperson for the court system, said employees noticed the systems were slowing down and denying access to some files.
“On Thursday, the problem seemed to spread to other computers,” she said.
By Thursday night, city officials were scrambling to contain the damage from a computer virus they now suspect is the “Conficker” virus, the latest super virus to spread around the Web. Named after a German pun that means “program that manipulates the configuration,” Conficker infected nearly nine million computers worldwide last month.
Houston’s Information Technology Department authorized an emergency contract with an outside agency late Thursday to help stop the spread of the virus and repair infected computers at a cost of up to $25,000.
On Friday morning, Municipal Court workers had added extra shifts and were conducting court business with pens and paper. Goins said that while the system had slowed down, court business was still being conducted. “We don’t have any significant delays in the courtroom, but some courtrooms are a little bit busier than others simply because the docket is longer,” she said.
Defense attorneys disagreed. Two of them – Kameron Searle and Sid McNeice – approached an 11News crews to say that most judges were simply resetting court cases for a later date, rather than processing them. “The courts are a mess,” Searle said. “Justice ceases, and there’s really nothing going on in the building.”
Mayor Bill White ordered all Municipal Courts across the city to close at 4 p.m. Friday. Those courts would normally be open throughout the evening and weekend. Goins said that all cases that had been scheduled through Monday evening would be automatically postponed for a later date.
Other Municipal Court services, like the payment of tickets and fees, would still be available both in-person and on-line, she said.
According to a spokesman for the Houston Information Technology Department, the virus appears to be contained to the Municipal Court and Parking Management systems within the City of Houston. While the virus has blocked access to most data on computer hard drives, it does not appear to have erased any information.
The Houston office of my employer has been pounded this week with some sort of virus/malware that has been propagating (not affecting my machine thankfully, as I take precautions beyond corporate IT's), but our IT department has not shared details on what they think it is (if they even know at this point).
The Conficker virus has apparently gone crazy in the last few weeks. That's a shame, because Microsoft issued a patch back in October to deal with the threat. That leads to the question -- has the city's IT department been applying such patches faithfully? And if not, why not?
In any case, now might be a good time for readers to make sure their antivirus and operating system software is up to date.
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Posted by Kevin Whited @ 02/06/09 06:37 PM | Print |
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