Virus affects computers

For the past few weeks, 2Fix has been working hard to repair students’ computers that have been infected with fake Anti-Virus (AV) programs. Fake AV programs come from websites that have malicious content on them that in turn harm our computers.

The most recent form of fake AV program to hit the campus is “Vista Internet Security 2010.” This fake AV program is alerting students that there is a problem with anti-virus software and that they need to upgrade their software. There are hundreds of these types of viruses out there and they are constantly changing to avoid detection by real AV software.

“It’s important to remember that these constantly change to avoid being detected by antivirus programs. That is why antivirus software on the computer can never be 100 percent effective. It’s really up to each student to use common sense and know what they are doing when using the internet or downloading programs,” Technical Services Manager Steve Wunschel said.

2Fix is currently sending the corrupted files that have gotten past BVU’s AV software to the company to have them add the pattern file to our software system so it can be detected in the future.

2Fix is also discussing other ways to prevent malware from infecting students’ computers while still allowing to students to use them the way they need to.

They have currently been working on a few new ideas and testing them internally, and if they find their ideas have worked, they then will apply them to the rest of BVU computers.

“If your computer is often getting infected with malware you need to take a step back and think about what you are doing on your computer to cause the problem. Getting this software cleared off of the computer generally takes several hours because each file needs to be examined by several programs. Sometimes the infections are so bad that a new hard drive needs to be issued. Being careful about how you use your computer can save a lot of time and headache,” Wunschel said.

While 2Fix is working on fixing the problem, there have been mixed reactions from students regarding how the problem is being fixed.
“My hard drive has crashed twice this year! I have noticed that some student employees are better at providing knowledgeable service than others. Overall, I have had pleasant experience at 2Fix,” junior Amber Dahlman said.

“I still have not received my hard drive back and it’s been two weeks already. Nor have I received any information regarding what has been done to fix the problem. It doesn’t surprise me that this virus has been going around,” junior Kathryn Mason said.

“I went to 2Fix because of the virus and they couldn’t figure out what was wrong so they gave me a loaner hard drive and scanned my old hard drive for viruses. I had to get a new hard drive so they transferred all of my stuff to the new one. I was happy until my new hard drive started to do the same virus thing again. I went back and they said they had figured out how to get the virus off. I had my computer back, virus free, in 10 minutes. It was really annoying and I was afraid I was going to lose all of my school work, but in the end 2Fix came through once more,” junior Stacie Lawson said.