Police computers brought down by 'good worm'
Sussex Police has been hit by a worm that has knocked out its office computers and forced workers to switch to back-up systems. Emergency calls are not being affected.
The organisation confirmed to ZDNet UK that it has been hit by the W32/Nachi worm, which is a variant of the MSBlast worm that started spreading around the globe early last week.
Nachi was dubbed the 'good' worm because it seeks out PCs that are vulnerable to the MSBlast worm and then downloads the appropriate patch from Microsoft's website to fix them. Additionally, it will delete itself from an infected machine the first time it is booted up in 2004.
A spokeswoman for Sussex Police told silicon.com's sister site ZDNet UK that computers used for administrative and general office work have been worst hit. "Our control rooms are running either using normal or established back-up methods, which they switch to during maintenance work. Our engineers are working to eliminate it," she said.
