After a number of virus outbreaks exploiting the Windows 2000 and Windows NT 4.0 operating systems, the University of California at Santa Barbara recently banned these programs from the school’s residential network.
The school’s Web site said Windows 2000 caused hundreds of problems on the school’s Web server last year. The action has upset some Santa Barabara students.
Scott Kessenick, a Santa Barbara freshman who used Windows 2000, was one of the residential network students affected by the ban.
Kessenick said he refused the university’s alternative of paying $100 for an upgrade to Windows XP.
“I just bought a router, so they can’t see that I’m still using Windows 2000,” he said.
Several other schools have experienced problems with Windows 2000, including the University of California at Berkeley. But Berkeley does not not plan on banning the program, according to The Daily Nexus, Santa Barbara’s student newspaper.
Windows 2000 has also caused problems at NU, said Tom Board, director of technology support services. The majority of computers attacked by viruses at NU use the Windows 2000 operating system, he said.
Most viruses are almost entirely spread by e-mail, with “EXE” files posing a particular threat, according to NU’s Information Technology’s Virus Web page.
But Board says there are no plans to ban Windows 2000 or any other program at this time.
“While it’s conceivable that we could ban something in the future, nothing has presented a great enough threat to do so at this time,” he said.
Gabriel Matlin, a McCormick junior and roving network consultant, said most of the virus problems he has seen were caused by Microsoft Outlook. He said the problem with Outlook is that it automatically opens e-mail attachments. Because of this, Outlook often runs programs with viruses before the user can choose to delete or not open the file.
Matlin, who fixes an average of two infected computers a week, said he considers virusues at NU more under control than at most schools. He attributes this to NU’s free distribution of Norton Antivirus, a software that offers free updates.
Matlin said there have been some significant virus outbreaks on campus, including one that stemmed from Outlook last year.
“In the middle of the outbreak, I was fixing 20 computers a week,” he said.
Nick Disabato, a McCormick senior and residential networking consultant, recalled an outbreak two years ago, when the “Love Letter” virus automatically sent infected e-mails to the first 40 names listed in the attacked computer’s address book. The virus spread quickly through networks of Kellogg Graduate School of Management and became a major threat to operations.
Disabato said he has not diagnosed a computer virus this year.
