A UK local council has just found the true cost of a virus infection which was introduced onto its network by an employee plugging an infected memory stick into his computer in May this year.

The overall bill for IT recovery and lost revenues was over £500,000 (more than $800,000), as systems were disrupted for several days.

The report on the outbreak from Ealing Council in West London states: ‘At the point the memory stick was plugged in the virus attacked the host PC.  It blocked connections to anti-virus and Microsoft Support websites and attempted to establish connections with 500 internet sites chosen at random from a selection of 25,000 seeking instructions from its author, and sought to also contact other similarly infected PCs that it could find. It then started propagating itself across the Ealing network.’

Although the virus has not been named, it obviously exploited the well-known Windows Autorun vulnerability to spread on the Council network. 

This could have been prevented by issuing all council employees with a secure USB flash drive with onboard anti-virus scanning – which would not only keep mobile data secured, but would also stop any infections using thumb drives to spread.

You can read more about this incident in the following articles:
 
www.theregister.co.uk/ealing_council_mystery_malware
 
www.scmagazineuk.com/Ealing-Council-facing-501000-fine-after-its-network-was-hit-by-a-virus-that-crippled-it-for-weeks
 
www.publicservice.co.uk/news_story

The City Council of Manchester, England, has counted the cost of an outbreak of Conficker in its network earlier this year,  and it comes to a staggering £1.5M ($2.5M) according to a report in The Register. 

The Council was also prevented from issuing hundreds of motoring penalty notices after Conficker worm knocked out parts of its IT systems.  Drivers escaped punishment after the Council’s fine processing system was taken offline in February this year, causing 1,609 motoring offences to go unpunished. 

Infection by the worm left Council staff unable to send emails or print documents, and struggling with extra paperwork after they were obliged to keep additional back-up records in case data was lost.

Clean up costs and consultancy fees were estimated at £600K. In additional, council IT chiefs spent a further £600k on thin client terminals.  A further £169,000 was spent on extra staff needed to handle a backlog of benefits claims.

And the cause of the infection?  Council chiefs blame an infected USB memory stick, and have disabled all computer USB ports in response to the incident.  How much would have been saved by rolling out secure USB flash drives with on-board, integrated anti-virus to stop the infection spreading?