The Internet has become a part of everyday life, and college students are not an exception.

Recently, various strains of viruses and worms have put students on college campuses around the country at the mercy of their school’s information technology department, many of which dealt with the same problems in different manners.

The MSBlaster worm and SOBig virus’ effect might not have been as bad if it weren’t combined with the influx of new and returning students and campuses having to register thousands of unclean computers onto one network.

‘It was mostly a matter of machines that came back and didn’t have proper antivirus software and updated patches installed,’ said Mark Nickel, a Brown University spokesman. ‘There’s a statistic going around that half of all student computers returning to campus [nationwide] had a virus that the student didn’t know about.’

Many university officials were thankful that these worms and viruses haven’t permanently damaged students’ computers.

‘They haven’t been the kind that deletes files off of students’ computers,’ said Bill Steele, a Cornell University spokesman. ‘Instead, it opened back doors on students’ computers and clogged up e-mail.’

Steele feels that a mandatory freshman seminar at Cornell called ‘Travelers of the Electronic Highway,’ which occurs during orientation, contributed to students’ proactive response. The seminar educates new students about illegal file sharing, updating antivirus software and keeping current on Microsoft patches.

For two days, Brown’s computer network was so slow that students weren’t able to use their Internet or check their university e-mail.

In a similar situation, Case Western Reserve University officials didn’t have to shut down the network, but still experienced slowdowns because of high volumes of infected e-mails.

‘At one point, we had three million messages going through our e-mail system, when we normally have 300,000 to 500,000 per day,’ said Jeffrey Gumph, the director of technology infrastructure services at Case Western.

Cornell dealt with similar numbers.

‘About 35 percent of our mail was infected with the SOBig virus,’ Steele said.

Case Western experienced more serious backups with its wireless network than with its land ports. The wireless network is used by 40 percent of the campus, Gumph said. Many students who were frustrated with their wireless network used one of the university’s computer clusters to access the Internet.

‘Basically, this was a big problem that required the mobilization of a lot of people,’ Gumph said.

Case Western found that its 50 employees, both student and staff, were able to deal with the problem adequately. SU hired 27 temporary staff from Tek Systems, a professional hiring service for technology needs in Rochester, N.Y. Brown sent employees who normally worked in the office out to the residence halls in an effort called ‘DormStorm.’

‘We literally had employees walking up and down the halls, knocking on students’ doors and helping them install the patches and software,’ Nickel said.

Brown officials also made 8,000 copies of a CD containing the latest patches and antivirus software, which they gave to students when they received their dorm keys. Cornell found itself well-staffed as it recently hired extra people for non-virus-related reasons.

One thing Brown, Case Western Reserve and Cornell universities had in common was a license agreement with Symantec, the antivirus company which makes the Norton Antivirus software. SU’s three-year license with McAfee will expire after next year, said Deb Nosky, manager of information technology communications and professional development for Computing and Media Services at Syracuse University.

‘When it does expire, we will go back to the board to determine what is the best system for students at the best price,’ Nosky said.

Published on September 17, 2003 at 12:00 pm