Worm having no adverse effect in NZ says Microsoft

An internet attack by the "blaster" worm has had minimal impact on New Zealand computers, Microsoft says.

The worm has infected more than 350,000 computers around the world over the last week. It caused computers with Microsoft software to reboot frequently or disrupted users' browsing on the internet.

Experts had warned that starting at midnight yesterday, infected computers that had not cleaned up the virus would turn into "zombies" instructed to repeatedly call up a Microsoft website that housed a software patch designed to protect against the worm.


However, Microsoft New Zealand said enough steps had been taken to ensure New Zealanders had "a positive online experience" yesterday.

Microsoft had disabled the windowsupdate.com url, which was what the worm was designed to attack.

Computer users who had applied the security patch and/or subscribed to the Windows update service also helped withstand the attack, the company said.

Microsoft New Zealand spokesman Terry Allen estimated that over 80 million copies of the patch had been downloaded worldwide since it was made available on July 16.

"While the blaster worm only attacks windowsupdate.com and does not cause any permanent damage to the computer, such as data deletion or damage to a hard drive, customers are still advised to take security maintenance for their computers seriously," he said in a statement.

"Hackers are malicious people, and the next virus they make could have a more detrimental impact on infected machines' data."

Thousands of New Zealand computer users called Microsoft's telephone helpline to ask about the worm.

Reports today from the United States said the attack had caused "barely a ripple, so far".

- NZPA