Nearly 40,000 computer infections could be found

First-year Megan Murray has faced a reality other students share. After clicking a link on Facebook, a virus was installed onto her laptop, causing her hard drive to crash.

“It just kind of appeared one day,” Murray said. “(IT) said I’d have to get a whole new hard drive.”

Murray isn’t alone. This semester, the Information Technology Services Help Desk in the I.D. Weeks Library has provided support for more than 1,248 student laptops.

From July until mid-October, 26,543 infections were found on computers brought into the desk. Out of the infections found, 1,203 were classified as critical threats, 12,260 were potentially unwanted programs and 13,080 were adware-tracking cookies.

Cheryl Tiahrt, director of IT, said the infections are found when students bring their laptops to the desk, usually because students are having difficulties connecting to the network.

Tiahrt said all computers are scanned, no matter what they are brought in for. For computers that have multiple viruses, it could take multiple scans spanning over several hours to catch and remove them all. Make sure you pop over to this website to find how you can get your computer fixed.

“A lot of systems are infected with malware,” Tiahrt said.

Tiahrt said it is likely around 40,000 infections will be found by the end of the semester.

The real-time malware protection could be anything from tracking cookies to more malicious infections, such as viruses. An up and coming virus, cryptolocker, will encrypt data on computers, and pay the user to decrypt the data, Tiahrt said. She said the university will be putting a notice out alerting users to the new malware.

“One laptop could have dozens or hundreds,” Tiahrt said. “Some of them are more dangerous than others.”

If an infection is found on a computer, the help desk details to the student what was found. The infections are removed free of charge, but if an operating system has to be reloaded, there may be a fee.

To avoid viruses and malicious software, IT Services recommends avoiding clicking on unsolicited links in messages, trusting instincts when opening attachments in emails, updating anti-virus software and being skeptical when looking at emails that could be phishing emails or scams, but look legitimate.

Student computers are scanned at the beginning of each semester before they are allowed to connect to the university’s network to ensure other computers aren’t infected by an infection.

Tiahrt said the network is constantly scanned. If an infection is found, the student is notified of the infection so the infection doesn’t spread to student computers.

Staff computers are also monitored for threats and anti-virus software is constantly updated. Student information such as billing information and transcripts are kept on Board of Regents computers and managed on a different network.

Tools to scan a computer for infections can be found on the MyU Portal.

Junior Tasha Lewis has experience with the help desk, but has not had many problems with infections.

“My computer likes to freak out,” Lewis said. “It just likes to do things on its own.”

Her computer will often make items on the screen appear large. Lewis brought her computer into the help desk, where the problem was fixed, and she was walked through how to solve the problem in the future.

As for infections, Lewis credits virus protection on her computer for preventing any problems.

“I haven’t had any problems that I know,” Lewis said. “I’m very lucky.”