Hardly seems possible, but they do exist, and they're all free.
Computer Networking and Support company AnswersThatWork.com were recently called urgently on a Monday morning by one of their clients, a large international law firm with offices in several countries, who were suffering from a number of serious network problems ranging from constant disconnections and Internet Access problems to a total inability to logon to their network.
When the tests on the weekend upgrades were found to be working properly, the question remained as to why the network was still, effectively, unusable.
When the focus of their investigations moved away from the weekend's upgrades, some of the network tests started to point to specific PCs on the network. On checking the PCs in question it became instantly clear that they were infected with a new unknown virus ! Instant emergency meeting. After consultation with the in-house IT support team it was decided that the only way to thoroughly clean the system of this paralysing threat was to shut down the entire network and clean every single PC one by one with AnswersThatWork's troubleshooting tools. This took four hours. Meanwhile no one could access the network.
What eventually transpired during the process of cleaning the network, was that on that morning a user had received an email about a "great place for free screensavers". That user had clicked on the link and downloaded what looked like a very cool screensaver. The user then forwarded the email to a number of other users who also downloaded the same funky screensaver. By mid-morning 16 PCs had the new "brilliant" screensaver installed, with more users about to install it ! However, unbeknown to those users, on installation the screensaver was releasing a brand new virus as yet unknown by the major antivirus companies. This virus belonged to a new trend of viruses which perform DoS attacks (Denial of Service) in short bursts only (to escape easy detection) with the result that you can have a network which works perfectly for an hour or more but which then suffers untold disruption for a 5 15 minute period, only to again work properly until the next random attack.
The upshot ? A full day's worth of billable time was lost by all the fee earners of this law practice; two days of in-house PC support were used up, plus two days of AnswersThatWork's time, involving two technicians. Costs, as per the internal memo sent by the firm's partners : a cool $100,000.
Source and full story: net4nowt
Computer Networking and Support company AnswersThatWork.com were recently called urgently on a Monday morning by one of their clients, a large international law firm with offices in several countries, who were suffering from a number of serious network problems ranging from constant disconnections and Internet Access problems to a total inability to logon to their network.
When the tests on the weekend upgrades were found to be working properly, the question remained as to why the network was still, effectively, unusable.
When the focus of their investigations moved away from the weekend's upgrades, some of the network tests started to point to specific PCs on the network. On checking the PCs in question it became instantly clear that they were infected with a new unknown virus ! Instant emergency meeting. After consultation with the in-house IT support team it was decided that the only way to thoroughly clean the system of this paralysing threat was to shut down the entire network and clean every single PC one by one with AnswersThatWork's troubleshooting tools. This took four hours. Meanwhile no one could access the network.
What eventually transpired during the process of cleaning the network, was that on that morning a user had received an email about a "great place for free screensavers". That user had clicked on the link and downloaded what looked like a very cool screensaver. The user then forwarded the email to a number of other users who also downloaded the same funky screensaver. By mid-morning 16 PCs had the new "brilliant" screensaver installed, with more users about to install it ! However, unbeknown to those users, on installation the screensaver was releasing a brand new virus as yet unknown by the major antivirus companies. This virus belonged to a new trend of viruses which perform DoS attacks (Denial of Service) in short bursts only (to escape easy detection) with the result that you can have a network which works perfectly for an hour or more but which then suffers untold disruption for a 5 15 minute period, only to again work properly until the next random attack.
The upshot ? A full day's worth of billable time was lost by all the fee earners of this law practice; two days of in-house PC support were used up, plus two days of AnswersThatWork's time, involving two technicians. Costs, as per the internal memo sent by the firm's partners : a cool $100,000.
Source and full story: net4nowt
