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Conficker Strikes UK Police Computers4 ,February, 2010 From Jason Holloway |
The police force in England’s second-largest city, the Greater Manchester Police (GMP), has suffered extensive disruption for several days following an infection by the Conficker worm.
The outbreak left policemen unable to run routine computer checks on suspected criminals and vehicles for three days from Friday 29th January. It became so widespread through the GMP network that a decision was taken to disconnect the GMP’s systems from the UK-wide Police National Computer, to avoid further infection. As a result, police had to ask colleagues in other forces in order to perform checks via the National Computer.
Although the source of the infection has yet to be established, it’s widely suspected that it was introduced via a USB flash drive. It shows that there are still networks which have not had the Microsoft anti-Conficker patches applied: and that USB stick hygiene is still an issue that deserves more attention.
Tags: Anti-Malware, Data encryption, Data Security, IT security, Malware, malware attacks, Security News, security risk, sensitive data, USB flash drives, USB Security
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