Computer virus hits Canadian banks

[Zenlitened]

Computer virus hits Canadian banks

Last Updated Tue, 16 Aug 2005 20:56:35 EDT
CBC News

An apparently new virus that attacks business computers using Microsoft's Windows 2000 system hit at least two Canadian banks and several U.S. businesses on Tuesday.

At the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, the Zotob virus affected computers in the trading division and head office. Spokesperson Rob McLeod said there were some temporary outages in isolated parts of the business. McLeod said automated bank machines, Internet and phone banking were all fully functional.

The virus also hit BMO Nesbitt Burns, but customer service was not affected, said spokesperson Ralph Marranca.

South of the border, media reports said ABC News, DaimlerChrysler, UPS, General Electric, and Caterpillar were affected by the virus.

http://www.cbc.ca/story/business/national/2005/08/16/Banks_worm_attacks20050816.html

[lovuian]

1. I think they need to call their IT administrator in INDIA and

see what he can do for them!!!

[Maple]

2. In Canada

the bank manager is likely to be FROM India

[Joebert]

6. Semi-related.

I work for one of the largest IT companies in the galaxy.

My local IT dept is outsourced to a local vendor. They handle the servers and desktops.

To get them to do something, I have to call a call center in another country, who will dispatch them.

That call center sends the call for parts electronically... to my team.

My team qualifies the parts, and sends it electronically to another outsourced vendor.

That vendor sees if the outsourced vendor that stocks the parts has them, and gets them to the site.

And only then can the local outsourced IT guy come to our desk to get us a replacement monitor or something.

Hmm...

I'm sure it's saving SOMEBODY some money.


A 2nd anecdote. We had a server fail. The local outsourced guys did what they figured would fix it, but then had to do a restore.

Guess who maintains the tape backup servers? The vendor in another country. So, to get data off of tapes in my city, the local IT guy had to call the IT half a planet away to get a restore going.

Ah, yes. You can just feel the savings...

[TomInTib]

3. Does that mean that the Canadian $ is at par with the USD...

I'm moving back!

Cannot believe that I moved back here after 25 years in Canadia...this country is NUTS! I was in Miami when * stole the first election, then I moved to CA when the Governator took this state. I am kind of feeling personally responsible for this mess.

Bethyl

[Maple]

4. Well Canada is booming

surpluses, lots of jobs, dollar going up, so you might want to return.

Leave the jinx behind though eh? :7

[burrowowl]

5. When. like M$

are they going to use LINUX.
Or Mac!?!

[Joebert]

8. Why not Linux?

Unless you spend more on your Linux installation than a Windows installation, a large company (read: bank) will not have somebody to sue into the stone age.

Microsoft is ok-ish here since these issues were patched a while ago, and the operating system involved is 5 years old.

I teach Linux, so don't think I'm pushing people away. I'm just pointing out that the people buying it in big numbers are doing so when they have a large distribution vendor to back it up, along with a hardware vendor that will support it as well.

[wli]

12. Solaris x86 is sometimes used in such environments

It sucks in various ways, but it doesn't have anywhere near as many problems as Microsoft.

Just getting off the most common platform via OS or hardware has phenomenal benefits in terms of the number of exploits and frequency of their releases.

[high density]

9. Because people making buying decisions see Dell and Microsoft

as their only choices. They don't know any better. Plus I wonder about how many teller systems and etc are out there for non-MS operating systems. Heck, some banks use imaging platforms that run on something like Windows 2003 with a client consisting of an ActiveX control that runs inside of Internet Explorer on Windows 2000 or XP machines.

[Joebert]

10. There are still banks running on 20 year old+ OS installations

OS/2 was officially discontinued only a month ago.

There are still VT100 terminals connected serially to a terminal server from the 80's in many banks.

The stuff the customer sees may be all pretty and Windowsy, but the stuff the tellers use behind the scenes is quite often archaic at best. Watch them type some time. You can watch them use a special keyboard, with overlays, colored keys, etc.

That's why all the panic hit over Y2K, so many systems that are mission critical are kept until they can't be kept any longer. These guys won't spend the millions it would take to redesign and modernize something that works just fine.

We do tech support where I work. We still get questions (rarely, but they do come in) on 386 based systems that are running a factory production line somewhere. Stuff like that will happen forever.

[wli]

11. depends on what buying decision; cellphones & embedded differ

If you include embedded systems, Microsoft and x86 aren't even the most popular OS vendor and platform.

[moggie]

7. It's 2005, people!

At this point, any company still getting hit by serious virus problems isn't paying fucking attention!. And these are banks! If they're not competent enough to keep virus-free, are they competent enough to be trusted with your money?

[Lisa]

13. hey, the CIBC (my bank) can't even be trusted with a fax machine!

So the revelation that they are vulnerable to sabotage via the Internets is completely in character. (They also had to cough up a couple of billion dollars last month, because they were gullible and greedy enough to help Enron scam customers.)

"It was clear that the bank's privacy practices failed at the most basic organizational level. As a result, customer personal information — and trust — was breached. The fact that the misdirected faxing occurred over a number of years, that the attempts to stop the problems were ineffective, and that the bank did not appropriately recover customer personal information were deeply disturbing to the Office."
http://www.privcom.gc.ca/incidents/2005/050418_01_e.asp