Virus Infects SC State House Computers

By FITSNews || A computer virus disguised as an internet security update ravaged computers at the S.C. State House complex last week, causing extensive disruption to the network used by state lawmakers and their staffers.

The virus reportedly began infecting computers last Wednesday after someone opened a malicious email disguised as a McAfee security update.  The virus caused outages and delays during one of the busiest days of the legislative session, and momentarily prevented the posting of content to the legislature’s official website, http://www.scstatehouse.gov.

Sources tell FITS that computer technicians spent most of last Wednesday night undoing the damage, and that the incident has been reported to local authorities as a “cyber crime.”

We’ll let you know if we hear anything more specific …

UPDATE: Okay, thanks to our new friend SC Legislator and some helpful internet sleuths, it turns out that the virus actually came from a REAL McAfee update that went haywire (read more here).  Once again, the SC legislature has NO CLUE what’s going on. The program also shut down hundreds of thousands of computer systems all over the world, so the problem wasn’t confined to the S.C. State House.

UPDATE II: We just spoke to the S.C. lawmaker who told us that the incident had been reported as a “cyber crime.” They said that they would notify the law enforcement officer they spoke with immediately.  And yes, it’s times like these when lawmakers are VERY glad that we keep their tips confidential.