Upon reading this, it may or may not be too late for students’ and NIU’s computers.

News has spread since February that a sleeper computer virus, mainly known as Conficker.c, has infected between five and 10 million computers worldwide and is supposedly set to become active today, April Fool’s Day.

The virus will only affect Windows-based computers, while Mac operating systems are immune to the virus according to a MacWorld magazine article.

For the NIU network’s sake, Jim Fatz, the director of information security and operations, said the ITS department is taking action to protect it by making the necessary software updates, blocking off sections of the network that may be infected until the virus is eradicated and possibly shutting down dial-in and wireless access if virus activity increases on those connections.

“We can never be fully protected for something like this as we are only as strong as our weakest link and that means any system on the network, including remote locations, dial-up and wireless put us at risk,” Fatz said.

Fatz also said there have been numerous reports of computers on campus infected by Conficker.c and have been dealt with as they are discovered.

It is not certain what the virus’ capabilities are, but it is believed by experts that a variety of things could occur, which include the deletion of all files on the computer, a master computer being able to manipulate the infected computers as “zombie PCs” or the monitoring of keystrokes to copy information such as passwords and bank accounts.

Some experts believe nothing will happen and whoever is behind the virus will change the activation date.

Students with Windows PCs are still advised to keep their antivirus software updated to help protect their computers.

“Students should have updated anti-virus software on their computers to prevent viruses from infecting their computers,” said Jim Leon, director of IT training at NIU. “Conficker can be detected by updated antivirus software, according to Microsoft.”

Some NIU students are not worried by the threat.

“I’m not really worried by the virus because I’m pretty careful when it comes to those sort of things,” said Jessica Carlson, junior special education major.

Some other students realize that keeping their software updated is the only course of action they can take.

“I have my virus protection updated on my computer, and if it can protect it against the virus, that’s the only thing I can really do because other than that I can’t really protect it,” said junior finance major Manish Singh.

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