The computer "started to shake"

darael

darael

darael

Soldato
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-devon-38857488
A town clerk has wiped council documents dating back to 2015 after mistakenly opening an email containing a virus.

John Vanderwolfe said the computer "actually started to shake" after he mistakenly opened the email sent to Tiverton Town Council in Devon.

The email claimed to be from a parcel delivery firm and infected all the council's computers.
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Wow, that's some virus to make your computer shake!
 
Probably had some kind of bitcoin type malware bundled which caused the CPU and GPU fans to spin upto max.
 
Or if it has a mechanical harddisk and is doing something crazy then it could perhaps be described as 'shaking'.
 
BBC News said:
Mr Vanderwolfe said it was the worst thing to happen in his 12 years there.
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I'm not being funny, but if you've been in a role that involves daily computer usage, then opening a dodgy attachment is no defence. Even if you've never previously worked in a tech support role.

A disciplinary will be on order, as with anyone from my organisation (NHS) introducing a virus onto the network.
 
The encryption would have used all the PC resources.

But the biggest fail is the poor internal network security and lack of backups since 2015, really? Councils are just ****e. :D

The council is now looking into computer security measures.
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And maybe a regular backup plan? If it only took a few minutes to encrypt it would take similar time to backup.
 
Ah when I posted wasn't a link in the original post? guess that is why it was all fired up then heh.

If they really don't have offline and/or offsite backups of anything crucial a few people should be getting fired.
 
Why don't they just pay the money? or do the ransomware scammers just take your money and run? Anyone stupid enough to run a random executable shouldn't be working for the council.
 
Sasahara said:
But the biggest fail is the [...] lack of backups since 2015, really? Councils are just ****e. :D
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I would bet that they were doing something they shouldn't have been doing like saving stuff locally rather than on a network location or something.
 
touch said:
I would bet that they were doing something they shouldn't have been doing like saving stuff locally rather than on a network location or something.
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I would bet they've been up to some shady stuff and a virus was just the excuse needed to wipe the evidence :D.
 
uber soldat said:
Nevermind, im sure there are up to date offsite backups....oh wait its the council, so no they wont have any backups and hes screwed. :D
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The Council I work for has had a full daily backup for many years. The financial systems are run by Oracle - off site - and the personnel systems are held off site by another service. These services are used partly because of their data security systems.
My council has a hot-desking policy where everybody uses a laptop which is plugged into a monitor when at a desk.
 
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mmj_uk said:
Anyone stupid enough to run a random executable shouldn't be working full stop.
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Fixed.

It's basic IT to know the difference between a PDF and an EXE and those disguised "PDF.EXE" extensions. The full filename shows up on Outlook! I can see for myself and I have one eye only and about 10% vision left in my eye, so it's bloody no excuse for people with normal vision! :mad:
 
Assuming this was this persons work mail box, it should never have got in to it.

Fire the exchange admins or whatever mail system they use.
 
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