tl20031103-000 "c m. m r: st A five ars a r n :nee has away NBA quite as :ason there that !stern ;rown In left ; 20-6 e-year have 1 the Tong? tched layers teams L little when [c and While next when wards [stern West , this -ewell the - leav-ricks, Es for aving stern w for hing, Raef star Lot. ersey stern , can with retch best rence they t last play-rould East. ason that have title ye to ust a TOUdiei Baltimore's #1 College Paper - Published Twice-Weekly - www.thetowerlight.com Monday, 11/3/03 Theory applied in robotics lab 5 Ehrlich suggests cap on increases 8 November brings music to stage 13 Family in 'pieces' in holiday drama 13 Departments Opinion 2 News 5 Nation 6 Campus briefs 9 Arts 13 Entertainment briefs 14 Sports 20 In this corner 20 Athlete of the Week 17 Classifieds 16 CANS combating virus threat Security updates help to protect computers; Consolidating campus domains considered Cailin McGough The Towerlight Computing and Network Services is stepping up efforts to protect com-puters on campus in response to an increased threat of virus attacks. Last week, CANS announced it will more regularly send security updates and patches to Windows-based computers. Greg Church, director of systems and networking for CANS, said updates are critical for protecting campus computers in the future. ""If up-to-date security patches, operating systems service packs, and anti-virus software protection are not regularly installed on a computer, then the computer remains vulnera-ble as a host for viruses,"" Church explained. In addition, the Center for Instructional Advancement and Technology and CANS are working to unite different systems on campus under the TU domain, explained Gloria Holland, executive director for the CIAT. ""We're asking the campus commu-nity to sign on to the Towson U domain, so as viruses come we can automatically stop the viruses from spreading,"" she said. As part of the TU domain, CANS and CIAT have administrative rights to get automatic upgrades and virus protection, she said. ""The viruses are more sophisticat-ed, the worms are more sophisticat-ed, so we can no longer operate the way we used to and we need to make that central connection,"" Holland said. Currently, the TU system is a ""dis-tributed computing environment,"" Church said. ""This means that servers and com-puters connected to our network are not necessarily managed by one sin-gle 'TU system' or unit. Rather, the environment is actually a collection or community of computers that are managed and operated by many dif-ferent people and support groups across campus,"" Church said. In August the Blaster worm infect-ed about 200 personal computers in offices, computer labs and class-rooms on Towson's campus. The worm was identified on Aug. 11 and its variants continued to spread for several weeks. Computers without the most current protective measures were susceptible to the Blaster and Nachi worms and the MS03-039 RPC vulnerability, Church said. According to the Microsoft Web site, a virus is code written with the intention of replicating itself, and spreads through computers by attaching itself to a host program. A worm is a type of virus that spreads without user action and dis-tributes copies of itself across net-works. A virus can damage hardware, soft-ware or data; a worm can consume memory or network bandwidth, caus-ing a computer to stop responding. The outbreaks at TU were accom-plished by exploiting security flaws in Microsoft Windows operating sys-tems, Church said. ""Unprotected computers that are connected to the Internet are the See VIRUS, page 7 Team gets in one more practice on Sunday afternoon Lisa Joluman,The Towerlight Senior finance major Ricky Crestwell reaches for sophomore exercise major Bunmi Akinnuoye (right) during a flag football practice Sunday afternoon on Burdick Field. Their intermural team, the Old Skool Players, will compete in the quarterfinals today at 6 p.m. on Burdick Field. Today High 76 Low 54 Tuesday High 76 Low 57 Wednesday High 77 Low 52 Thursday High 66 Low 50 ee oft Friday High 61 Low 42 "
