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New virus infects many CCI laptops

ITS sees increase in customers

As the weather gets colder, the flu isn’t the only virus going around campus.

Students with UNC-issued Carolina Computing Initiative laptops are among Windows users experiencing hard drives infected by a new virus.

The virus, which poses as a defragmentation reminder, has caused a spike in the number of complaints fielded by Information Technology Services, said Matt Howell, manager of walk-in services for the department.

He said the department is busier than usual but is equipped to handle the problem.

“There’s really not a whole lot to it,” Howell said. “People are bringing it in, and we’re doing the best we can in terms of getting them removed and computers back to people.”

Howell said because of the inexact and occasionally incorrect diagnoses given by users, the number of students who have been affected by the virus is uncertain.

But he said the total number of loaner laptops supplied to students is up, which he blamed on the outbreak of the virus.

Brandon Ballance, a student assistant for ITS, said they noticed the problem Sunday and Monday.

“It seems like a whole lot of people have it,” Ballance said. “A lot of people came in Sunday. It was pretty significant.”

The virus typically poses as a message telling users they need to defragment their computers, but when they try to run the defragmentation, their programs shut down, Howell said.

“It’s basically like a lot of fake antivirus ones that come up these days,” Howell said. “It kind of comes and says, ‘There’s a problem with your hard drive, you need to get this resolved, pay us money and we’ll fix it for you.’”

Fixing it is a fairly simple matter of wiping the infected computer’s hard drive and operating system to remove the virus, he said.

“It took about 45 minutes to get in and out,” said senior Alex Patterson, whose computer got the virus. “The actual backing up didn’t take that long.”

Students with the virus also don’t need to worry about permanently losing all of their data.

“There’s manual ways of troubleshooting the virus, it’s just not the preferred method,” Howell said. “For CCI customers, what we’re actually able to do is back up their data locally here and put data back on the machine afterwards.”

Howell said when new viruses emerge, ITS always sees a reaction like the one observed Sunday and Monday.

“Anytime you have a new virus, security companies aren’t going to have protection in place, so there’s always that window of opportunity (for the virus),” he said.

Contact the University Editor at university@dailytarheel.com.

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