GN fights off tech virus

Thanks to the vigilance of their information technology division, the Nunavut government avoided the ravages of the SirCam virus last week.

“We caught it in time and it hasn’t affected our system,” said Peter Baril, director of the GN’s informatics division.

For the past two weeks, the SirCam worm infected computer systems around the world, sending out torrents of infected e-mail attachments to unsuspecting users. The virus peaked around July 23.

The virus only affects users whose computers run on the Windows operating system. People using Linux, Macintosh and other operating systems suffered little inconvenience, other than streams of unwanted e-mails with large attachments.

Baril said the GN’s IT staff fought off the worm by using anti-virus software installed on their e-mail servers. He said the software disinfected the offending e-mails, allowing them to pass through to individual work-stations.

Marcel Mason, the system administrator at Nunanet, Iqaluit’s Internet service provider, said last week that “quite a few” customers suffered damage caused by the SirCam virus.

Mason recommends that home users install diagnostic software sold by companies like Norton and McAfee, and that they update their software frequently.”