IT STARTED OUT LIKE ANY OTHER DAY for Amy at the Sequential Label and Supply Company (SLS). She liked her technical support job at the help desk. Taking calls and helping the office workers with PC problems was not glamorous, but it was challenging and paid pretty well. Some of her friends worked at bigger companies, some at higher-tech companies, but everyone kept up with each other, and they all agreed that technology jobs were a good way to pay the bills. The phone rang. This was not a big deal for Amy. She answered her phone about 35 times an hour, 315 times a day, nine days every two weeks. The first call of the day started out the same as usual, with a worried user hoping Amy could help him out of a jam. The call display on her screen gave her all the facts: the user's name, his phone number, the department in which he worked, where his office was on the company campus, and a list of all the calls he'd made in the past. "Hi, Bob," she said. "Did you get that document formatting problem squared away after our last call?" "Sure did, Amy. Hope we can figure out what's going on today." "We'll try, Bob. Tell me about it." "Well, my PC is acting weird," Bob said. "When I go to the screen that has my e-mail program running, it doesn't respond to the mouse or the keyboard." "Did you try a reboot yet, Bob?" "Sure did. But the window wouldn't close, and I had to turn it off. Once it finished the reboot and I opened the e-mail program, it's just like it was before-no response at all. The other stuff is working OK, but really, really slowly. Even my Internet browser is sluggish." "OK, Bob.We've tried the usual stuff we can do over the phone. Let me open a case, and I'll dispatch a tech over as soon as possible." Amy looked up at the LED tally board on the wall at the end of the room. She saw that there were only two technicians dispatched to deskside support at the moment, and since it was the day shift, there were four available. "Shouldn't be long at all, Bob." She clicked off the line from Bob and typed her notes into ISIS, the company's Information Status and Issues System. She assigned the newly generated case to the deskside dispatch queue, knowing the roving deskside team would be paged with the details and would attend to Bob's problem in just a few minutes. A moment later, Amy looked up to see Charles Moody walking briskly down the hall. Charlie was the senior manager of the server administration team. He was being trailed by three of his senior technicians as he made a beeline from his office to COMP 3410 - Examen Nombre: Numero de Estudiante .
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Universidad Interamericana de Puerto Rico Departamento de Ciencias y Tecnología COMP3410 Septiembre/Octubre de 2007 3 the door of the server room where the company servers were kept in a controlled environment. They all looked worried. Just then, Amy's screen beeped to alert her of a new e-mail. She glanced down. It beeped again-and again. It started beeping constantly. She clicked on the envelope icon and, after a short delay, the mail window opened. She had 47 new e- mails in her inbox. She opened one from Davey Martinez, an acquaintance from the Accounting Department. The subject line said, "Wait till you see this." The message body read, "Look what this has to say about our managers' salaries..." There was an icon for a file attachment that Amy did not recognize. But, she knew Davey often sent her interesting and funny e-mails. She clicked on the icon. Her PC showed the hourglass pointer icon for a second and then resumed showing its normal pointer. Nothing happened. She clicked on the icon for the next e- mail message. Nothing happened. Her phone rang again. She clicked on the ISIS icon on her computer desktop to activate the call management software and activated her headset. "Hello, Tech Support, how can I help you?" She couldn't greet the caller by name because ISIS had not yet opened the screen on her PC. "Hello, this is Erin Williams in Receiving." Amy glanced down at her screen. Still no ISIS. She glanced up to the tally board and was surprised to see the inbound call counter tallying up waiting calls like digits on a stopwatch. Amy had never seen so many calls come in at one time. "Hi, Erin," Amy said. "What's up?" "Nothing," Erin answered. "That's the problem." The rest of the call was an exact replay of Bob's earlier call, except Amy couldn't type the notes into ISIS and had to jot them down on a legal pad. She also couldn't dispatch the deskside support team either. She looked at the tally board. It had gone dark. No numbers at all. Then she saw Charlie running down the hall from the server room. He didn't look worried anymore. He looked frantic. Amy picked up the phone. She wanted to check with her supervisor about what to do now. There was no dial tone. The next day at SLS found everyone in technical support busy restoring computer systems to their former state and installing new virus and worm control software. Amy found herself learning how to install desktop computer operating systems and applications as SLS made a heroic effort to recover from the attack of . __________________________________________________________________________
Answer the following questions (look for the definitions of terminology when necessary):
1. Do you think this event was caused by an insider or outsider? Why do you think this?
2. Other than installing virus and worm control software, what can SLS do to be ready for the next incident?
3. Do you think this attack was the result of a virus, or a worm? Why do you think this?