After Department of Information and Technology at UW-Madison technicians attempted to squash a computer worm that paralyzed UW-Madison and worldwide networks over the weekend, the campus server took another hit Monday when rolling network outages left puzzled students and faculty wondering if the Internet would ever return.
Network users, like UW-Madison, running Microsoft SQL 2000, a popular server software, experienced a network outage that blocked Internet access within the UW-Madison server and servers across the world. Despite the efforts of DoIT technicians, the worm that was first reported late last week continues to plague UW-Madison network users.
\Our network engineering group discovered the problem on some machines late Friday and through the weekend it grew as a problem,"" said Brian Rust, Communications Manager for DoIT.
According to Rust, an unknown source created and sent a computer worm, a program that infiltrates the server and disrupts its service, to all networks using the Microsoft SQL server. The worm that has suspended businesses and government systems interrupted Internet use across campus.
In order to combat the worm, technicians obtained a patch and applied it to all computers that DoIT manages. The patch, provided by Microsoft, is available free of charge to all users in order to correct the problem.
""We have applied patches to machines that were affected on the campus network and informed other departments how they can apply patches to fix their machines,"" Rust said.
Despite these attempts, the server continued to crash throughout the day Monday.
""There were several times that the Web portal was down for problems related to the SQL worm and its effects on different servers,"" Rust said.
Frustrated students using University Housing ResNet services said they felt the harsh effects of the worldwide worm infection.
""I hate that I couldn't access the Internet all weekend. Since most of my classes are on WebCT, I couldn't get any work done,"" UW-Madison freshman Laura Buwalda said.
""It's very frustrating that the school expects us to use the Internet for so much of our classwork, yet it continues to fail,"" UW-Madison freshman Andrew George said.
As they continue to work on the server, DoIT representatives said they hope to rid all computers on the campus server of the worm's damaging effects.
""I can't say how long it's going to take, but we're planning on having it up permanently as soon as possible,"" Rust said.
Despite their efforts, Rust said there is little that can be done to prevent a reoccurrence within the UW-Madison system.
