On the mend

Computer systems at three major London hospitals are largely back online on Friday morning, three days after a major computer virus outbreak forced staff to disconnect the network.

IT systems at St Bartholomew's (Barts), the Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel and the London Chest Hospital in Bethnal Green were taken down on Tuesday following infection by the Mytob worm. The three hospitals make up the Barts and the London NHS Trust.

A spokesman for the Trust explained that email and internet access had been restored "across key areas", while the Trust continues to roll out its recovery plan, gradually restoring computer access to wards and departments. "Progress is being made and we expect systems to be fully restored in a matter of days," he said.

A serious computer virus infection at the Trust - later identified as caused by the Mytob worm - was first detected on Monday. IT support staff thought they had the malware under control but systems crashed when hospital staff logged onto systems on Tuesday, prompting managers to launch an established disaster recovery plan. External consultants have been drafted in to get systems restored.

Posted by Justin Payton in Adware, Spyware and Trojans at 17:11

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Pentagon has banned, at least temporarily, the use of external computer flash drives because of a virus threat officials detected on Defense Department networks.

While defense officials would not publicly confirm the ban, messages were sent to department employees informing them of the new restrictions. As part of the ban, the Pentagon was collecting any of the small flash drives that were purchased or provided by the department to workers, according to one message distributed to employees.

Workers are being told there is no guarantee they will ever get the devices back and it is not clear how long the ban will last.

Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman would provide no details on the virus Friday, but he described it as a "global virus" that has been the subject of public alerts.

Posted by Justin Payton in Adware, Spyware and Trojans at 11:05