DANIEL TYLER GOODEN

LUTCHER – St. James School System caught a virus last March 12, but it was an electronic illness rather than a cold. The computer virus program “navidad” was a Trojan horse style program which slipped into the computer systems through an e-mail to stir up trouble. The virus was designed to steal e-mail addresses from the computer and send itself out to anyone listed in the address book. It also caused damage by filling the computer with files, thus “slowing down the system until it eventually stopped,” said Sonny Zeringue, St. James School computer technician. Luckily for St. James Parish, it has its own mail service, separate from the program which was infected by the virus, which kept the virus from spreading to many computers. The “navidad” virus was one of a few that came with the e-mail, though the others were minor and didn’t cause any problems. The virus only works if it is opened by the user, said Zeringue. Employees were notified of the infectious e-mail and told to delete it if it came through. Zeringue also put a block on the e-mail, keeping it from coming around again and again. The virus was cured in the school system after Zeringue shut down the system and installed the blocks, effectively treating the virus. The e-mail came to the school system by way of the Louisiana Department of Education. Doug Myers, director of communications for the Department of Education, stated their computer technicians found the virus on that Monday as well. “We don’t know where it came from but it passed through our system a couple of times,” said Myers. The Department of Education has quite a few e-mail addresses across the state. Once the virus started working, it would keep coming back, as the addresses it stole from the department also had the department’s address listed in their address books. “It was stopped before it did anything but if there was no anti-virus protection then we would have been in trouble,” said Myers. After the virus was cleared from the system it left for good, not reentering in the last week. The St. John Parish School System also ran into trouble with the virus. “We’ve had hundreds of e-mails we’ve got to keep deflecting, probably 1,200 to 1,300 in the last two days,” said David Andras, computer programmer. Since the state connects with everybody, the virus hit everybody, Andras added. Every couple days, someone else opens an e-mail containing the virus and Andras gets another wave of e-mail. The school system’s servers have been programmed to block and strip the virus in all incoming and outgoing e-mails. This is the fourth virus the school system has had to deal with this year. Without the anti-virus software purchased earlier by the school system, the damage and downtime to the servers would have cost an immense amount of money, said Andras. To avoid computer viruses, install an anti-virus protection program on your computer and don’t open executable files sent from an address unfamiliar to you. If you suspect you have a virus there are numerous sites on the internet that provide virus detection and clean up programs.