Technically, Blaster is a worm, a program that begins with a single machine and infects other machines, leaving a copy of the worm behind, so the infected machine hunts for others to attack.
At Parson's Hopkins High School in Minnetonka, Minn., the Blaster worm was more of an annoyance than a major threat to the school's network, according to Peter Markham, head of the technology department. Hopkins' two-man information technology staff watched Blaster in real time using Symantec, the school's antivirus software, and was immediately able to locate and work on the 12 computers it infected.
Hopkins has avoided serious virus problems because many of their computers are Macintoshes. Most viruses, Markham said, don't cause damage to Macs.
"Ninety-nine percent (of viruses) were written against Windows operating systems, because they're the most popular. Not many write (viruses) for Macs, which works for me."
Most of the viruses come into Hopkins as e-mail attachments. Their antivirus software now blocks any attachment that ends in ".exe," ".vbs" or ".ser.," common extensions for infected files.
Karen House, Webmaster for Regina Dominican High School, a small private all-girls school outside Chicago, said most of their viruses are transferred from disks.
House worries most about students receiving e-mails from hackers that direct them to delete antivirus software. One particular message cons the recipient into believing they are deleting a corrupted file, when they are really destroying their virus protection. Regina relies on antivirus software and has suffered some problems, but nothing major, said House.
Cesar Valle, the lone technology coordinator at Eastern High School in Washington, D.C., downloads updates from the Norton antivirus system all D.C. public schools use every night around 11 p.m. and midnight. Valle said that is the prime time for teenagers hacking away at home to send out viruses.
"We were not touched by the Blaster worm," said Valle. "But every other school in D.C. was affected.
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