Blaster and Welchia Worms On Campus

The Blaster worm was first reported in the daily bulletin on August 15th. IST provided a description of the problem and maintains web pages describing viruses alerts and Security Vulnerabilities.

This worm and its variants (Welchia), exploited a vulnerability in Windows 2000 and XP systems. The Microsoft Security Bulletin describes the vulnerability and provides patches for Windows 2000 and Windows XP.

If you machine is infected, the recommendation in the Security Vulnerablity is that you:

1. isolate your machine from the network.
2. call in support staff.

Unless you do so, your machine will attack and infect other machines on campus!

Support staff will assist you in developing a plan to protect your machine from future attacks.

See the Symantec Blaster and Welchia Web pages for a description of tools to detect and remove these worms (FixBlast.exe and FixWelch.exe). Note that before using these tools, you will need to turn off the System Restore feature (Click Start. Right-click My Computer, and then click Properties. Click the System Restore tab. Select "Turn off System Restore" )