The Zotob Windows worm infected computers at Division of Motor Vehicles offices throughout North Carolina early Tuesday morning. The North Carolina Department of Transportation (NCDOT) said the virus affected the computers in tag offices, not licensing offices. According to NCDOT, the virus has been contained and offices should be up and running again by Friday.
NCDOT, which employs about 14,000 people and is responsible for the second-largest U.S. state-maintained highway system (over 78,000 miles), runs Windows at all offices, sources told MacDailyNews.
Zotob is yet another Windows worm. Users of Apple Macintosh computers running Mac OS X are unaffected as usual.
MacDailyNews Take: Let’s see here: early Tuesday morning to sometime Friday throughout the entire state. How much did that outage cost North Carolina? Enough to have purchased Macs instead?
For our Windows-only friends: If you’re considering adding a safe, powerful, elegant, and fun Mac OS X machine to your computing arsenal, information about how to do so smoothly, can be found here. For inexpensive entry to the Mac platform, you might want to take a look at Apple’s new Mac mini which starts at just US$499 — it just might be the perfect machine for you.
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As if the DMV didn’t take long enough…… Now they’ll have to do everything the old fashioned way-ON PAPER!
….hello waititng 10 hours at the DMV!!! Bring a bag lunch and be prepared to hold it in!
They’re still going down? This long after the worm has been out?!
“According to NCDOT, the virus has been contained and offices should be up and running again by Friday.”
WTF? Contained you say? Sounds like it must have wiped everything out first if it’s going to take 3 days to get things up and running again! When will these sheep ever learn that there is a better way?
This all just means more money for Microsoft. Now they can say “See, we told you to upgrade!” and like good lemmings, they will.
MW “wish”
upon a star…
I wish there was software that could run a mid size business on a Mac. I’s shift my Server farm in a hearbeat. Alsa, this isn’t the case. We need to convince some Oracle and Filemaker developers to get on the stick. Until then its patch ho, patch ho its off to patch I go… all the time hugging my mac laptop computer….
How embarrasing. I just forwarded this to my dad who lives in North Carolina.
Maybe that’s why it takes forever to get a Highway project done. Every little thing is done on the ‘doze.
PSA
Remember…
Friends don’t let friends use Windows.
I just dont get why people arent fed up yet.
when you wish:
FileMaker is a subsidiary of Apple. Doesn’t all FileMaker software run perfectly on a Mac, or are certain applications Windows-only? I doubt it.
You can’t run a mid size business on OS X using this? Looks like to me you can.
http://www.filemaker.com/products/fmsa/index.html
“I wish there was software that could run a mid size business on a Mac. I’s shift my Server farm in a hearbeat. Alsa, this isn’t the case. We need to convince some Oracle and Filemaker developers to get on the stick. Until then its patch ho, patch ho its off to patch I go… all the time hugging my mac laptop computer….”
Sounds like “wish” has bought the ignorant blather of the Windows community that Macs don’t have any business software. Never mind with the facts … it’s easier to believe the idiots in the IT department.
MDN Magic Word: “example” …
But officer… the worm ate my registration…
“NCDOT … runs Windows at all offices, sources told MacDailyNews.”
Wow! MacDailyNews is doing original reporting (sort of) instead of harvesting bits from other websites? Could this be the start of a trend?
No rebuttals from the M$ Freedom Fighters?
“No rebuttals from the M$ Freedom Fighters?”
Their computers are still down. Please wait while they complete running MS virus removal tool.
Wait a minute: NORTH CAROLINA has the SECOND LARGEST state highway system???? Must be a really interesting definition of “state-maintained highway system.”
As for a DMV/DOT being taken down by virus/worm (Windoze usin’ fools), Zotob came out days ago, I wonder how long it took them to notice their computers were down
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“Virus removal tool” Is that the guy they get to actually remove all the viruses?
joe
URL for original article, please?
Niffy
I supplied the tip to MDN about this “outage”, and I’m happy to see they followed up on it. I bought a car from an individual Tuesday morning, only to find out that I couldn’t get tags for it because the computers were down due to a virus. Was told to come back around 3pm. I did, and they were all still sitting around twiddling their thumbs, still waiting for a fix. Was told I could get my tags the next morning…. so this morning I go back (15 miles 1 way, and NO, they DONT answer their phones!) and the big VIRUS sign is still posted on the window. No one knows when it will be fixed, and there is no such thing as doing business without the computers running. When I mentioned to a girl in the office that they wouldn’t have these problems if DOT used Macs (fat chance considering how many IT people would be laid off due to inactivity), she hesitated a second then blurted out, “Oh, we got this virus from a Mac!” I politely informed her of the virus ratio of Macs/PCs and she says she knows this cause she is taking a computer course at a tech school. What can I say to that??!!! Bet she’d make a good candidate for the next “Clueless” movie. (No, I didn’t say that, but I thought it)
“Bet she’d make a good candidate for the next “Clueless” movie.”
You do realize, she is going to become an IT person for some corporation or government organization, when she graduate.
“You do realize, she is going to become an IT person for some corporation or government organization, when she graduate.” – s’ response to Wingsy.
Oh boy…another IT “expert” in the making! Maybe she can apply for a job with the Henrico County school system.
So, how’d MDN know it was the Zotob worm?… I hope they didn’t speak to the clueless clerk taking a computer course!
What if they did get the virus from a Mac, which I doubt. The point was if they had Macs the virus COULD NOT RUN!