On Friday April 19 the tech department shut down the network in order to avoid a potential disaster.

A Windows user opened a spam email that looked legitimate, and responded to the email suggesting that it was sent to the wrong person. The email was actually a worm, which is a virus that self-replicates throughout the network. By responding to the email, they opened their system to a malicious download, which then created the virus.

The tech department’s response to the situation was to immediately shut down the network in order to contain the virus. Only PC users were affected by the worm, though the tech department is not 100% certain as to why. “This was likely due to the fact that the worm was a Windows virus. The worm most likely would not have affected Mac users, which make up the student body,” Paquette said.

The cleanup process involved going through each individual computer and running three separate tools in attempt to scan and remove the worm, which took about three hours per computer, and about 50-60 man-hours. This process was successfully completed, and the BSM network is currently free of any malicious content.